Beach Party RWBY (and also JNPR)
by He who is AWESOME
Summary: The title should say it all. Could also be called 'Pyrrha Blushes a Lot'. Apologies in advance for the length. Set between Volumes 2 and 3, and dedicated to Monty Oum.


**There's a song on the RWBY Volume 2 soundtrack titled "Time to Say Goodbye (Beach Bae Remix)", and if you go to the video of it that RWBY Wiki-contributor "Project Predacon" uploaded onto YouTube, you will see that many of the comments are about how the song conjures images of the (hopefully) inevitable beach episode. Combine that with my recent (at time of writing this A/N) addiction to everything Arkos, and here we are.**

 **Set after Volume 2, but before the year-end tournament (also known as 'VOLUME 3'!) they kept going on about. Enjoy.**

 **Disclaimer: I don't even own the DVDs. How do you expect me to own RWBY?**

 **Beach Party RWBY (and also JNPR)**

"... And after I had fixed my mustache, I impaled the mustache comb through the Beowolf's forehead before..."

Yet again, Professor Port was "regaling" (read "boring the crap out of") his class with "true" stories of his exploits as a young Huntsman. Of course, none of his students were actually paying attention to his hammy tale, not just because the professor failed to realize that he'd told this story before –which he had- and not just because it was boring as all holy hell, which it was.

No, the students weren't paying attention because they were too preoccupied with the anticipation of Spring Break next week. It will be their last chance for rest, relaxation, and decompression before finals and the tournament.

Later, at lunch, teams RWBY and JNPR were discussing Spring Break plans. Nora had been talking about having fun with her family and Ren's before going off on multiple tangents which inexplicably led her to the topic of sloth wrestling, which she probably could've ran with for another seven hours had Ren not brought her a large stack of pancakes. A subtle smile came to Blake's face as the sound of Nora's high-pitched chattering was quickly replaced by the quieter –if somewhat gross- sound of flapjacks being shoveled _into_ the hammer-wielder's mouth as opposed to words being spewed _out of_ _it_.

"Sho whu 'bout you guysh?" Nora asked with her mouth full, her question being directed at team RWBY. She didn't notice that while talking, she had accidentally spit a tiny piece of partially-chewed pancake that landed on Weiss's cheek. The heiress, instead of yelling at Nora like every fiber of her being wanted her to, simply wiped her cheek with a napkin and took a deep breath in order to keep her temper in check.

"Nora, please don't talk with your mouth full," Ren calmly told his childhood friend. Nora swallowed, which –if you'd never met her before- would've been impressive since her cheeks had been so stuffed with food she looked like a chipmunk, but everyone at the table was used to Nora's eating habits by now.

"Sorry Ren," Nora cheerfully replied to the gunslinger before returning to her previous activity of frantically inhaling pancakes like she was going to the chair. She did, however, make sure to look at her friends to let them know that she was still part of the conversation even if she was currently too busy eating to actively throw in her own two lien.

"I don't know," Weiss sighed. "I'm probably just gonna stay here. Atlas only has 2 seasons anyway: cold and slightly less cold."

"Same," Blake chimed in. "I don't really have anywhere better to be anyway."

"You guys do know that means you'll have to go to study hall, right?" Jaune said with a spoon hanging off his nose, a feat that Yang was currently trying –and failing- to emulate.

"If it means having the best final grades at this table, it's a sacrifice we're willing to make," Weiss replied as she fist-bumped the ninja cat-girl beside her.

"Well I think it's a good idea to keep up with your studies," Pyrrha said while removing the spoon from her loveable (*cough*beloved*cough*) goofball leader's nose, eliciting a small, disappointed "Aw" from said blond boy. Ruby giggled at this, a spoon hanging victoriously off her own nose.

"YES I GOT IT!" Yang exclaimed triumphantly as she finally got the spoon to stay on her face, her little outburst startling her friends. "Well, I don't know about the rest of you, but the weather said we're in for a heat wave next week, so I'm hittin' the beach!" The blond brawler said, leaning back and putting her hands behind her head. Only a second later, the spoon fell off her nose and onto the table, leading her to glare at the accursed silverware.

"Oooh, that sounds fun, sis! Can I come?" Ruby bounced in her seat, her spoon still hanging onto her nose almost magnetically.

"'Course, Rubes!" Yang cheerfully replied, wrapping an arm around her beloved baby sister. "Hey, I got an idea: let's all go! We'll make it a weekend Beacon beach party!"

"Oooh, let's do it let's do it lets do it lets do it lets do it lets do it lets do it lets do it let's-"

"Breathe, Nora," Ren said as he put a hand on the bubbly girl's head to stop her excited bouncing. He didn't give his own answer; Nora was in, so he'd be dragged along whether he wanted to or not. Based on the small smile on his face, however, it was safe to say Ren wasn't opposed to a day at the beach.

"I'm in! Pyrrha?" Jaune looked at the redheaded warrior, unknowingly hypnotizing her with his charming smile and deep blue eyes.

"Uh, sure. I'd love to go to the beach," Pyrrha replied nonchalantly, secretly thankful that her years of training gave her enough self-control to not drown in those aforementioned deep blue eyes.

"Okay, I guess I'm in, too," Weiss said. "Blake?"

"Huh?" Blake snapped her head up from her near-omnipresent book, having tuned out most of the conversation anyway.

"You coming to the beach this weekend?" Yang asked, giving a pleading pout. Blake had learned to resist Yang's puppy-dog pout, but when she noticed that Ruby was doing it too, she knew she would not be able to resist. Sighing in defeat, she smiled. "Okay, I'm in."

"YAAAAY!" Ruby and Yang both squealed as they choked Blake in a brutal hug.

"Calm down, you two. We still have classes this week," Weiss pointed out, feeling the need to be the pragmatic one.

"Yeah, but they're letting classes out early on Friday, so we'll have plenty of time to go shopping for all the essentials," Yang retorted with a smile.

"... Fair enough," Weiss relented. She hated losing, especially to Yang, but let's face it: that was ironclad logic right there.

"Okay, so it sounds like all of our planning is pretty much done," Pyrrha chimed in. This time she was the one with a spoon on her nose, which –given that she had struggled, failed miserably, and gave up on the feat earlier in the lunch period- elicited some odd looks from her tablemates.

"Pyrrha," Jaune caught her attention with an unamused look on his face.

"Yes, Jaune?" The redhead asked, slightly confused by the aforementioned unamused look.

"Using your Polarity is cheating," Jaune stated as he pointed at the spoon on his partner's nose.

"Okay," Pyrrha replied before the black aura around the spoon (that everyone at the table minus Jaune had just-now noticed was there to begin with) disappeared, followed immediately by the spoon in question falling off of Pyrrha's nose.

What followed was, in order: a good-natured laugh among friends, Ren giving Nora the Heimlich when said good-natured laugh caused her to choke on her pancakes, said Heimlich causing Nora to cough up literally half a pancake which hit Weiss square in the face with a nice solid _'SPLAT'_ , and finally, another great RWBY vs. JNPR food fight. This one ended with the dining hall having a massive hole in one of the walls (basically half the wall in question was straight-up gone), a couple windows were completely blown out, several hundred beverage cans were literally _embedded_ in the remaining walls and ceiling, at least 3 of the vending machines those cans would've come from were _also_ embedded in the walls, a couple pillars were knocked down, the floor had so many craters and cracks and stains and scorch/skid marks that it legitimately looked like a warzone, at least one snack machine looked like it had literally been turned inside out, smoke was billowing out of the kitchen as well as from a flaming trash can, tables were either overturned or just plain broken, and there were two holes in the ceiling where someone was launched into the upper atmosphere before plummeting back down.

Casualties of this edible annihilation: the uniforms of students who were unable to escape the danger zone in time [A/N: trying... to resist... singing... "Highway to the Danger Zone"], Jaune had a possible mild concussion and what appeared to be a carrot inserted into his ear, Ren was entirely covered in tomato sauce and curled into a ball with his hands on his groin and tears in his eyes, Ruby was hog-tied with her own hood and had an apple in her mouth, and Blake was pinned to the wall with forks and a swordfish (seriously, why do the Beacon kitchen staff have _swordfish_?). Yang and Pyrrha were slumped over a pile of table debris, Pyrrha with an empty tub of ice cream on her head and Yang with a mustard bottle in her cleavage, Nora was face down in a pie in a crater directly under one of the holes in the ceiling and somehow she looked both charred and frozen at the same time, and finally, there was a person-shaped pile of pies with a side-ponytail laying against one of the felled pillars, so that's what happened to Weiss.

Campus security had their hands full that day trying to keep Professor Goodwitch from murdering eight certain students, and from strangling a certain headmaster who was notorious for not taking any preventative or disciplinary action and then justifying himself by stating "Come now, Glynda, I have to find some source of free entertainment in this job."

 _-The next day-_

After getting painfully chewed out by Goodwitch, the groundskeeping staff, the kitchen staff, and the student body president (Jaune and Ruby simultaneously thought: "We have a student body president?") the day before, teams RWBY and JNPR entered the dining hall and were greeted by the sound of a decrease in conversation and an increase in rapid finishing of meals (probably to be ready to head for the hills should another food fight break out). They were all tired, as having to write a 5000-word essay on why food fights such as theirs are a colossal waste of skills and time for Huntsmen-and-Huntresses-in-training (in one night) was part of their punishment.

After sitting down with their meals, teams RWBY and JNPR didn't notice as two figures approached: the first was a young man with messy light blue hair, a pair of yellow goggles, and a red jacket, and the other could simply be described as a set of abs with a teenage monkey faunus attached.

"'Sup, guys," the set-of-abs greeted.

"Hey, Sun," Ruby and Blake replied. Ruby tried to be as cheerful as she normally would be, but she was half-asleep (y'know, from spending the night writing the aforementioned 5000-word essay).

"Heard you guys had another food fight yesterday," the blond boy attached to a permanently-exposed set of abs said as he sat down next to Blake. "We're sorry we missed it," he chuckled before he noticed the unamused look his fashion-conscious teammate was giving him.

"Okay, _I'm_ sorry we missed it. Neptune's just glad he didn't get covered in purple stuff again," Sun corrected himself to appease his bro.

"So, we heard you guys were planning a beach party," Neptune said with a (no-doubt practiced) lady-killing smile as he sat down between Blake and Weiss, facing the now-blushing heiress.

"U-Uh, yeah. It was Yang's idea. Ehehe," Weiss said with a blush while simultaneously cursing her own honesty.

"Sooo... If you're the party planner, I take it you're in charge of the guest list, too...?" Sun drawled, his question addressed at Yang.

Weiss whipped around to give the blond brawler her own puppy-dog pout, and Yang could see from the corner of her eye that Jaune and Ren had 'please please please' looks on their faces (Ren's being more subtle, of course).

"Don't you guys have plans with your own teammates?" Ruby asked before her sister could answer, not really realizing the girl-guy ratio that was at the heart of the issue.

"Nah, Scarlet and Sage have their own plans," Neptune explained with a shrug, before adding in his head _'That and they haven't been properly introduced in the show yet.'_

"Oh, what the hey? The more the merrier!" Yang decided as the apparent party-planner. Sun and Neptune both fist-pumped, Weiss quietly whispered "Yes", and Jaune and Ren were both relieved that they wouldn't be outnumbered 3-to-1 by girls in swimsuits (Ren's relief was, of course, more subtle).

With that out of the way, teams RWBY, JNPR, and SN enjoyed a peaceful breakfast, much to the relief of the other students in the dining hall.

 **-x-x-x-**

The rest of the week was uneventful. The only other noteworthy event was a meeting among the girls in team RWBY's dorm Thursday night that Jaune, Ren, Sun, and Neptune weren't privy to, especially since Nora threatened to break some legs if they tried eavesdropping through the door.

At lunchtime on Friday, teams RWBY and JNPR (and Sun and Neptune, of course) headed to the airship docks to go down to Vale. Once at the mall, the girls headed one way and the guys headed another. At Yang's insistence, the girls' first destination was the swimsuit section.

"Uh, Yang? Why'd we come here first?" Ruby asked.

"Because we go to a school where we learn to fight soulless monsters hell-bent on wiping us off the face of Remnant," Yang replied as she began looking at the store's selection. "A school that neither has a pool, swim team, swim club, or even a hot tub, so I doubt I'm the only one who didn't pack her bikini into her luggage when the year started."

Weiss was a little annoyed that, yet again, Yang's ironclad logic was, well, ironclad. But then that irritation quickly dissipated when she remembered that they were shopping. The girls then spent the next few minutes looking for what they each thought would be a good-looking swimsuit.

"Pyrrha! What in the name of Fragment are you doing!?" Nora half-yelled at her teammate [A/N: I decided to name Remnant's shattered moon Fragment. Get it? Remnant? Fragment? Okay]. Pyrrha, who felt that she'd been doing nothing wrong, simply stood there holding the modest red one-piece she'd wanted to try on.

"What do you mean? I was just going to try this on," Pyrrha stated innocently, not sure why her hyper, hammer-wielding friend seemed so upset.

"Pyrrha, did you forget what we talked about last night?" Nora asked in an almost interrogator-like fashion.

"Uh, yes," Pyrrha replied weakly, doing her best to lie through her teeth.

Nora was not convinced. "Pyrrha, you are a terrible liar," she told her. Yang, Ruby, Weiss, and Blake (in that order) then simultaneously threw in their own two lien, peanut gallery-style.

"Yep."/"Uh-huh."/"Sorry, it's true."/"It's true, you are."

"B-b-b-but-" Pyrrha stuttered, desperately trying to find _some_ kind of excuse or defense or _SOMETHING_.

"No! No way are we letting you go to the beach looking like a lifeguard!" Nora scolded.

"But I am a lifeguard!"

One could practically hear the record scratching when Pyrrha said that, although it's just as likely that something happened at the music store a couple storefronts down.

The girls looked at Pyrrha, astonished. Why they were astonished is unknown, but seeing as it's _Pyrrha freaking Nikos_ we're talking about here –four-time Mistral tournament champion, top of her class at Sanctum, and freaking _breakfast cereal mascot_ (seriously, someone really needs to explain how that worked)- a safe bet would be that they were surprised that such an accomplished individual would have something as mundane as 'lifeguard' on her résumé.

"Uh, what?" The girls (i.e. RWBYN; pronounced 'Reuben') said simultaneously.

"Well, yeah. I-I mean, I'm qualified, but my permit is probably expired by now-"

" _NOOOOOPE!_ " Yang interrupted while confiscating the one-piece Pyrrha had picked out. "Now you are DEFINITELY not wearing this!"

"Okay, honestly, what is wrong with it?" Pyrrha asked, fearing the conversation was heading for an infinite loop.

"If you wear this, then people will think you _are_ a lifeguard, and knowing you, you'll feel obligated or something and you'll be lifeguarding instead of having fun with us, and then all the hunky guy lifeguards'll fawn all over you instead of fawning over _MEEEEEEE_!" Yang explained/whined, leading Weiss, Blake and Nora to simultaneously face vault, Ruby to facepalm, and Pyrrha to simply stand there with her mouth open, completely floored by the sheer stupidity of the answer she just got.

Resigning herself to the fact that her own humility is not worth risking a brain aneurysm like just now, she accepted her fate, and turned to the rest of the girls.

"Okay, fine. What do you guys think would be a good one for me?" She asked, nervously keeping in mind the girls-only meeting the night before.

Unfortunately for Pyrrha's anxiety, in response to her question, the girls all got devious looks in their eyes and then pounced and grabbed her.

 _-About an hour or so later-_

At the food court, Jaune, Ren, Sun, and Neptune were sitting at a table, sharing a pizza.

"Mmm, this is some good pizza," Sun said, taking a bite.

"You think this is good pizza?" Jaune asked incredulously. "You guys need to get outta Beacon more often. One of these days, we gotta take you to Ray's. Best pizza in Vale."

Ren simply nodded in agreement.

"Sounds good. If you're ever in Mistral, we oughta take you to Justinian's. It's the best pizza in the kingdom," Neptune said.

"So, uh, Ren, why'd you get that stuff again?" Sun asked, pointing to Ren's shopping bag filled with plastic shovels, buckets, and various other sandcastle-building supplies.

"Nora," The green-clad gunner replied simply before taking another bite of pizza.

"Huh?"

"Knowing Nora, she'll wanna be 'Queen of the Castle', and so she'll want an actual castle, then Ruby will want to play, then after they get bored they'll wanna do something else," Jaune explained before taking a long sip from his soda. "That reminds me: after we eat, we should get some stuff for a game of volleyball or something."

 _'Bzzzzzzt' 'Bzzzzzzt' 'Bzzzzzzt'_

Jaune took out his scroll to check the text message. "It's from Ruby. 'Gonna b a while. Sry 2 make u guys wait :('"

"Okay, then. I say we finish eating, get that volleyball stuff, and then hit that arcade we saw," Sun suggested. There were no objections; in fact, both Jaune and Ren had hi-scores at that arcade to defend.

 _-ANOTHER_ _hour or so later (geez, girls and shopping, amiright?_ _(A/N: please don't kill me))-_

The girls were walking through the mall (well, Nora was skipping) to meet up with the boys at the arcade. Blake and Weiss were both blushing from their first experience swimsuit shopping with Yang, but in hindsight they got off relatively easy. Pyrrha, on the other hand, was walking a couple steps behind the rest with her head down, trying to hide a blush that matched the color of her hair.

At the arcade, the distribution of patrons was a little unusual. Rather than seeing a fairly even dispersal among the various games, most of the customers were gathered around two game stalls, a light-gun game and Dance Dance Revolution. From what the girls could tell, Ren and Jaune were DOMINATING. In the light-gun game, 'Grimminator', Ren was annihilating every remote-controlled cyborg Grimm on screen headshot after headshot while his healthbar did not move at all and his score piled up like _nobody's_ business. His player 2, however... not even close.

Over at the DDR machine, Jaune was dancing circles (almost literally) around the other guy. Working her way through the crowd, Pyrrha saw a _WALL_ of arrows pointing in different directions on the screen. Clearly this was one of the game's most difficult songs, yet Jaune wasn't even breaking a sweat. His moves were so fluid; Pyrrha couldn't help but become entranced by her partner's skill.

"Hi," Yang poked her head next to Pyrrha's, causing the spearmaiden to give out a startled "Eeep!"

"Oh, hello, Yang," Pyrrha replied nonchalantly before putting her eyes back on her dancing leader.

"Wow, Jaune's got some moves, huh?" Yang said, not receiving a reply from the redhead beside her. Glancing out the corner of her eye, Yang could see not only Pyrrha's enraptured gaze locked on the dancing blond knight, but she could also see a small drop of drool starting to dribble out the corner of the spearmaiden's mouth. A hilarious (to Yang, at least) idea instantly formed.

"Wow, he's good; like, REALLY good, huh?"

"U-uh-huh," Pyrrha barely managed to squeak out in response.

"Hmm, maybe you could find a way to teach him to channel his dance skills into his fighting, don'tcha think?"

"I uh, I-I um... uhhh. Huh," Pyrrha's mind had just BARELY registered what the blond girl beside her had said. Why didn't _she_ think of that? Especially after the school dance?

"Or, y'know, you could, oh I don't know, teach him to use those moves in... _other_ ways, eh, Pyrrha?" Yang said, leaning in closer so Pyrrha didn't miss the subtext.

Okay, THAT snapped Pyrrha out of her stupor. Well, that, and the crowd erupting into cheers and applause as Jaune finished the song, not having missed a single arrow. Blushing harder than she ever had before in her life, Pyrrha turned her head to see Yang cheering for Jaune as he typed 'J ARC' next to his high score, right above 19 other consecutive 'J ARC' high scores.

"Hey guys," Jaune said as he approached Yang and Pyrrha, not noticing that his opponent was being carried off the dance floor by his friends, too exhausted (and legs too gelatinous) to move by himself.

"Pyrrha, are you okay? You look a little flushed," he said as he reached out to touch his partner's forehead.

"No no, I'm fine! I'm just a little... hot! You know, from the crowd. Ehehe," Pyrrha quickly explained, rubbing the back of her head. Yang opened her mouth to say something along the lines of _'Maybe it wasn't the_ _crowd_ _that made you so hot, there, Pyrrha,'_ but clammed up when Pyrrha shot her a _'I WILL BRUTALLY END YOU'_ look.

"You sure?" Jaune asked, his caring nature not entirely buying it while his oblivious nature completely missed the dirty look that Pyrrha just shot Yang.

"Yes. But thanks anyway for your concern, Jaune," Pyrrha reassured him, this time with a sincere smile.

Jaune, knowing his partner's sincere smile when he sees it, decided to drop the matter. "Okay then. So, how 'bout we go see how Ren's doing?"

"Lead the way, Jaune," Pyrrha said, still smiling. Once his back was to her, Pyrrha shot Yang another dirty look, to which Yang replied by innocently whistling as she walked after Jaune.

When they finally made it through the crowd surrounding the Grimminator machine, Jaune, Pyrrha, Yang, Neptune, Ruby, and Weiss (the latter three having had only watched Jaune and not participated in –or even been aware of- Yang messing with Pyrrha back there) saw that Ren was at the final boss: some kind of cyborg-chimera-Grimm- _thing_ with one of the heads being the upper body of the cyborgified-stereotypical-scientist-guy who was the creator/controller of the hordes of aforementioned remote-controlled cyborg Grimm, at least according to the game's premise as described on the side of the game booth.

Ninety seconds. Ninety seconds was all it took for Ren to win. As the (cliché and unoriginal) monstrosity on the screen died in a series of explosions, Ren's audience, like Jaune's, broke out into cheers and applause as Ren typed in 'LIE REN' next to his high score, badassfully dropped the light-gun like a microphone, and then got glomped by an ecstatic Nora. Player 2 had a friend get an ice pack for his now-incredibly-sore hand. Jaune and Ren then pooled their impressive amount of tickets together and redeemed them for a few Super Soakers for the beach party and –most expensively- a video game console for the dorm room.

With that out of the way and Blake –a fellow pistol-packer (that sounds wrong, I know)- rendered slack-jawed by Ren's impressive display of gunnery, the group of students headed to the food court. The girls were hungry and Jaune and Ren both said they could go for a snack after the exertion of setting new arcade records like bosses. There was some chicken fingers and fries, burgers and fries, some sushi (guess who), a couple soft pretzels, a couple salads, and some playful (or 'semi flirtatious', if you asked anyone else sitting at the table) banter between Jaune and Pyrrha when Jaune tried to steal some croutons from Pyrrha's salad and she retaliated by stealing some of his fries. And after that bit of unnecessary story padding, the group left the mall and headed back to Beacon to rest up before going to the beach tomorrow.

At Yang's suggestion, Nora kept the swimsuit they got for Pyrrha locked up so Pyrrha wouldn't be able to do anything along the lines of, say, stealthily getting rid of the swimsuit and sneaking off back to the mall and getting a more… modest swimsuit. Yang must be psychic, seeing as that was Pyrrha's plan the moment they got back to Beacon.

 **-x-x-x-**

Just like Yang said that the weather had said, it got hot. Real hot, real fast. The group didn't really notice because they'd spent most of the previous day in a climate-controlled mall, but it had started to get unseasonably warm around midday, and the rising temperature didn't much let up overnight.

Jaune had been so proud of himself for beating his old DDR high score, he forgot that it was supposed to be a warm night and had gone to bed in his signature onesie like he usually did. Next morning, Jaune woke up early from the uncomfortable heat and looked around his team's dorm room. Incredibly, he got up as Nora –AKA team JNPR's resident human alarm clock- was just beginning to stir. Jaune unzipped his onesie almost all the way down and was surprised that he _wasn't_ greeted by a cloud of steam coming out of his PJ's. Looking down for a moment, he decided to hit the shower before Nora completely woke up and made a teasing comment on how he's been working hard this year and that it showed, or something like that. He was pretty certain she wouldn't do something like that to him, but at the same time, according to a small voice in the back of his mind, Yang could be a bit of a bad influence (nothing nobody didn't already know) and he wasn't sure how much exposure to Yang would corrupt Nora's innocent –if hyperactive and mildly insane- little mind.

And now with that thought floating around his skull, Jaune took a moment to marvel at how well Ruby turned out before he grabbed some essentials and hit the showers. When he closed the door, Nora let out one last yawn before she was completely awake, noticed Jaune was up, and went over to her leader's nightstand to turn off the alarm on his scroll because the last time he got up before her (which was the only other time this year he had done so) he forgot to do that and the alarm was kinda REALLY annoying. Nora then DIDN'T make her bed –this _is_ Nora we're talking about here- and proceeded to her morning ritual of waking Ren up by poking him once every 1.5 seconds for exactly 105 seconds. For anyone interested, that works out to 70 pokes before Ren wakes up.

By the time Jaune got back from his cold shower (which was cold because it was too hot today for a warm shower and _totally_ _NOT_ because he had another dream about Pyrrha last night), the rest of his team was up and waiting for Ren to finish cooking pancakes. As one could expect, the wait for the fluffy disks of deliciousness was KILLING Nora; she was literally _vibrating_ with anticipation. Jaune, remembering that he was in a post-shower state of wearing nothing but a towel (a fact that Pyrrha was all too aware of, resulting in her looking at her feet to hide the blush on her face), quickly hopped into the closet to get dressed so that nobody would see ANYTHING. Getting back into the room involved, y'know, opening the door, which released the smell of cooking pancakes into the hallway, which will inevitably (and quickly) wake up team RWBY who will then come over to JNPR's dorm for breakfast, and Jaune refused to let team RWBY ( _especially_ Yang) see him shirtless under _any_ non-beach circumstances.

"Heeeeyy! We smell pancakes!" Yang sang as she and the rest of team RWBY (including Zwei) walked through the door just as Jaune returned from the closet now fully clothed.

"Hey guys. Will Sun and Neptune be joining us for breakfast?" Ren asked as he loaded a large first stack of flapjacks onto a plate for Nora, thus preventing the Valkyrie from possibly literally jumping out of her skin.

"If that's alright... And if there's enough pancakes," Weiss answered while watching Nora tear her pancake stack apart.

Jaune looked at Ren, who nodded approvingly. "Sure, call 'em over."

Weiss pulled out her scroll to text Neptune. A few minutes later, there was a knock on the door to team JNPR's dorm. Jaune opened the door to reveal _Dem Abs Man_ and his partner Pokémon _Seaking_ , better known as Sun and Neptune.

"Hey guys," Jaune greeted.

"'Sup guys! We come bearing gifts!" Sun replied.

"We do?"/"You do?" Neptune and Jaune asked simultaneously.

"Yep!" Sun answered. "We bring the gifts of our empty stomachs, where you can dispose of any unwanted pancakes!"

"Haha! That was a good one. Come on in. Ren's just about done making another batch," Jaune laughed as he let them in. Amazingly enough, the room was in fact able to fit ten students AND an adorable Pembroke Welsh Corgi.

 _-One pancake breakfast among friends later-_

WOW, these people are gluttons for Ren's pancakes. Although, to be fair, ten people and a dog is a lot of people to cook for (especially when one of them is Nora Valkyrie), and Ren didn't want to make any assumptions on how much anyone would eat, so he made "plenty for everyone". Combine that with how much everybody loves Ren's pancakes, and it shouldn't be a surprise that most people present were somewhere between 'completely stuffed and satisfied' and 'Holy Dust, I may never eat again'.

"Mmmmm... Those were some _gooooood_ pancakes, Ren," Sun said, patting his stomach. "I'd better not lose my six-pack after that."

"Oh, now that would be a disaster, wouldn't it, Blakey?" Yang replied with a mischievous smirk, giving the cat-girl a nudge with her elbow. The only response Yang got from Blake was a glare which –unfortunately for the cat-girl in question- did not distract Yang from the light blush on her cheeks.

Ruby, who was currently scratching Zwei's belly with one hand and rubbing her own overstuffed tummy with the other to keep from barfing up her weight in pancakes, opened her mouth to interject and try to save Blake from any more of her sister's teasing, but words were not what came out.

"Uh, Ya- _BUUUURRRP_!"

Ruby went wide-eyed and clapped her hands over her mouth when she realized the sound that came out before removing her hands to meekly squeak out an "Excuse me. Eheheh."

For what seemed like a full minute but was really only like 2 or 3 seconds, the room was silent. The expressions on the faces of everyone in the room ranged from shocked and disgusted (Weiss) to amused and impressed (Sun) to 'What's going on? Why isn't my belly being scratched anymore?' (duh).

Nora, whom everybody assumed had passed out from a maple syrup overdose, was the one to break the silence.

"Uuuuuhhhh... Not bad," Nora said as she tried to sit up. However, only Nora's upper body was actually on her bed, so when she tried to sit up, she fell onto the floor, flat on her butt. "That wasn't bad. One sec."

Nora tapped her chest with her fist.

" _BUUUUUURRRRRP_!* _Sigh_ * There, beat that!" Nora smirked with her arms crossed. Ruby looked at her, confused, Weiss looked even more disgusted than before, while Yang, Sun, Neptune and Jaune were snickering.

"Nora, please tell me you're not implying what I think you're implying," Ren implored with his face in his palm.

"Aw, c'mon, Renny. Be a pal," Nora replied as she raised her arm to give her friend a playful slap on the back.

"Nora, seriousl- _BUUURRP_!" Ren burped right when Nora's hand made contact with his back. The aforementioned snickering from the peanut gallery ceased as everyone looked at the pair in equal parts confusion and amusement.

"D-Did she...? Did she just... Burp you?" Jaune asked his male teammate while trying extremely hard not to burst into an oxygen-depriving fit of laughter. Ren, on the other hand, was trying his best to look his usual stoic self and not look equal parts annoyed and embarrassed like he actually felt. Unfortunately for him, Nora cheerfully piped up in response to Jaune's query.

"Yep! Sure did!"

And then everyone in the room busted out laughing at Ren's expense. Groaning, Ren put his face in his hands to hide a blush of embarrassment, but everyone saw said blush, and Yang managed to be smart enough to take a photo of Ren's humiliation because they may never see the stoic gunner blush again; it's like seeing... Whatever Remnant's equivalent to Bigfoot is!

"I don't think you're in the running to win, here, Re- _BUUUUURRRRRPP_!" Yang belched while laughing uncontrollably. "Whoo! All hail the Burp Queen!"

"I challenge you for that title!" Sun challenged. He inhaled deeply, before releasing a powerful " _BLEEE-UUUURRP_!"

That one caused an uproar of laughter in the room. Even Weiss, team RWBY's resident stick-in-the-mud, was laughing. She, Blake, and Neptune even tried to get in on the gaseous action, but each of their attempts were pitiful, even compared to the one Nora got out of Ren.

"Okay, okay! My turn," Jaune exclaimed before taking a deep breath, flexing his diaphragm, and then: " _BUUUUUUUURRRRRRRP_!"

Again, the dorm was filled with such laughter that it's a miracle the sound waves from their merriment didn't cause the dorm room's walls to collapse. Pyrrha was now the only one left un-burped, but everyone was too busy laughing their butts off to remember (unless Zwei was keeping track, but he's a dog, so it's not like he'll remind anyone anyway). Like everyone else, Pyrrha was having trouble breathing due to laughing so hard. Unbeknownst to her, all that laughing was soon going to lead to something as she tried to compliment Jaune in between fits of giggles.

" _BUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUURRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRP_!"

For a moment, the room was silent as everyone just stared at Pyrrha wide-eyed. Then, Jaune grabbed the redhead's hand and lifted her hand over both of their heads while jumping to his feet (thus lifting Pyrrha up to her feet as well).

"AAAAAAAANNNND WE HAVE A WINNAAAARRR!" Jaune exclaimed in his best wrestling announcer impression, holding Pyrrha's hand in the air while holding his other hand in a fist up to his mouth like a microphone. "Ladies and gentlemen, it is my honor to present to you today, four-time champion of the Mistral regional tournament, top of her class at Sanctum Academy, the face of Pumpkin Pete's Marshmallow Flakes breakfast cereal and now, Champion of the First Beacon Pancake Breakfast Belch-A-Thon, PYYYYYRRRRRRHAAA NIIIIKOOOOOSSS!"

Everyone then burst into cheers and applause. Pyrrha was laughing so hard from Jaune's over-the-top announcing that she barely registered the tingly feeling she felt where Jaune's hand was gripping her wrist (although she feels that every time she and Jaune make physical contact, and she's distracted by the aforementioned cheers and applause, so her not registering that tingly feeling is completely excusable).

Letting go of Pyrrha's hand, Jaune smiled at her and joined in on the applause. Pyrrha could swear she saw pride in Jaune's eyes. Was he proud of her... _because of that burp_? Pyrrha knew he was a simple guy with simple pleasures, but still.

The room's jubilation, however, was interrupted by some loud incessant knocking... from the ceiling.

"Hey! Keep it down! I'm trying to get some beauty sleep!" An angry voice came from the room upstairs.

"Oh. Uh, sorry Coco!" Jaune sheepishly replied to the angry ceiling voice while rubbing the back of his neck. All he got in response was one last knock on the ceiling (although it was actually more of a dull thud; she must've been using her handbag –y'know, the one that's no-doubt heavier than it looks because it _unfolds into a minigun the size of its owner_ \- to knock on her room's floor). Also, team CFVY's dorm room is right above team JNPR's; who knew?

"Ehehe, I guess we were being kinda loud, huh, guys?" Ruby chirped while scratching the back of her head.

"Bark bark!" Zwei replied first, his stubby little tail wagging.

"Yeah, heh, I guess we were," Yang agreed. "We should probably brush our teeth and get ready for the beach. See you guys at the docks in, say, an hour?"

"Sounds good. Can't wait," Jaune replied as everyone who wasn't a member of his team left the room to go about their morning routines. Jaune then proceeded to help his team clean up. He and Ren were taking care of the dishes while the girls made the beds... or, rather, Pyrrha was watching Nora to make sure she actually made her bed before making her own. After the room was cleaned up, team JNPR left to take care of their morning washroom rituals.

About an hour later, everyone was washed, dressed, teeth brushed, and all packed and ready for the beach. Also, despite Pyrrha's best efforts to make her forget, Nora remembered to pack the swimsuit the girls all collectively agreed Pyrrha was to wear at the beach today. Let's just say the devilish grin on Nora's face made Pyrrha a little... uneasy.

 _-And now, finally, at the beach-_

It was a beautiful day. Hot, but beautiful nonetheless. The gang had yet to even find an empty spot to set their towels down and the sea breeze was already cooling them down to a still-warm but more comfortable level. Naturally, since the group consisted of both guys and girls (and since at least two of those guys wanted to get into boyfriend-girlfriend relationships with two of the girls in the group), the boys were carrying pretty much everything: towels, coolers, umbrellas, beach chairs, inner tubes and other such floatation devices, the Super Soakers, the sandcastle-making equipment Ren got, a volleyball set complete with net, net-poles, and scoreboard, a mini-grill with which to cook lunch, various bottles of sunblock and other beach-related lotions, the girls' bags AND their own bags. The only things the guys weren't carrying were a beach ball currently in Ruby's hands, the book Blake brought with her to read, and a Frisbee that Yang and Weiss were taking turns throwing for Zwei to chase as they were walking on the sand.

Yang stopped, smiled, and declared "Right here. This spot is perfect!"

In response to this declaration, the guys groaned in unison as they dropped all the stuff they'd basically been conned into carrying, some of the stuff clattering on its way to the ground.

"Okay then. We're gonna go change," Jaune said as he stretched his back for a sec and then picked up his duffle bag. "You guys set the towels. 'Kay?" He said to the girls.

"What?" Yang replied. "Whatever happened to 'Ladies first'?"

"Yeah!" The rest of the girls chimed in.

"You guys lost that privilege when you used your feminine wiles to trick us into carrying all this stuff," Jaune stood his ground while internally asking himself _'Did I seriously just use the phrase 'feminine wiles'?'_.

" _*Overly dramatic GASP*_ How DARE you?" Yang said overdramatically with a hand on her heart, feigning offense at the allegation. "How could you POSSIBLY accuse me of using such an underhanded- _pffft_ hahahahaha! Okay, fair enough, you guys." Yang acquiesced as she dropped the charade.

"Thank you," Jaune flashed a smile as he and the rest of the guys started towards the changing rooms. "Back in a few!"

After a length of time that could be defined as 'a few', the guys returned, now wearing their swim trunks and the girls were varying levels of impressed.

Sun was wearing dark green –almost black- trunks, and overall, his beach look was the least impressive, but that's only because his abs are always on display, so him being shirtless has less impact than it would if his abs _weren't_ always on display. On the upside for him, Sun's never-before-seen-by-the-girls toned and muscular back is now on full display and these trunks make his butt look _good_ (at least he hoped so).

Next to him was Neptune, wearing swim shorts the same shade of blue as his hair. His body was lean, the kind of lean that kills any doubts about his combat skill when you factor in his rifle/glaive/trident weapon. Also, he was still wearing his goggles on his head. Also, washboard abs.

Ren was even better looking than Neptune (ow, his aching ego). His trunks were the same green as his usual outfit, with a magenta stripe on the front of the left leg. He was lean and muscular, but not 'buff', because that's just not how he rolls. To finish off his beach ensemble but mainly to show everyone that the quiet, stoic badass is the most badass kind of badass, Ren was wearing armless sunglasses à la Morpheus from _The Matrix_.

Standing between Neptune and Ren, Jaune's beach attire-induced shirtlessness was the most notable of the bunch. His trunks were white with a pair of diagonal yellow stripes wrapping around the left leg, very reminiscent of his symbol. His muscular, toned arms seemed to be even more impressive than they were at the dance several weeks ago, with Jaune's strong torso exposed to compliment them and –oh my, is that the beginnings of a six-pack?

"Whoa-ho-ho, lookin' _good_ , boys," Yang purred, followed by the other girls voicing their assent.

As much as that was the reaction the boys were hoping for, they were still a little embarrassed to be basically showing themselves off for the girls' amusement. They weren't posing or flexing or anything; then they'd just be making idiots of themselves. Sun started to flex like it was photo shoot instead of a trip to the beach, but Neptune saved him from looking like a complete doofus with a swift yank on the tail.

" _OW!_ Dude! Not cool!"

"Neither is what you were about to do," Neptune rebuffed.

"Alright boys, save some horseplay for the rest of us," Yang interjected. Everyone looked at her with an eyebrow raised. "Yeah, I don't know either," she said with a shrug.

"Alright, let's GO!" Nora interrupted in her usual overeager, literally-jump-into-the-middle-of-the-conversation way. "Now we gotta change into our swimsuits, _don't we_ , Pyrrha? Come on, let's go!" She said as she grabbed Pyrrha's arm and started dragging the champion towards the changing rooms, Pyrrha protesting the dragging the whole way. Ren, being the eagle-eyed boss that he is, raised an eyebrow a tiny bit at both Nora's tone and the fact that Pyrrha's face went red in response to said tone.

"Ooh, she's right," Yang said as she walked between Weiss and Blake. "We need to change. It's only fair; we got to ogle you guys in your shorts, now it's your turn to ogle us in our bathing suits, right ladies? C'mon, Ruby!" Yang called to her sister as she pushed Weiss and Blake, who –along with the guys- had been blushing since the word 'ogle' first left the blond brawler's mouth.

"Coming," Ruby replied to her sister's call. "Stay here, Zwei."

As the girls walked off, the boys looked among each other.

"So what do you guys wanna do while we wait?" Neptune asked.

"Bark bark!" Zwei barked cheerfully with the Frisbee in front of him and his tail wagging.

Jaune chuckled. "Well, we've got the four of us, a Frisbee, and a dog, let's do that," he suggested. The guys shrugged and agreed in a 'sure, why not?' kind of way. As the guys set about learning why dogs really are man's best friend, the girls reached the changing rooms.

"Alright Yang, PAY UP!" Nora held out her hand toward the buxom blondie, not noticing Pyrrha massaging her wrist and glaring at her after the dragging. Yang pulled out a few lien from her pocket and handed it to the smiling Nora.

"Uh, Yang...?" Ruby began.

"I bet Nora that at least one of the guys –namely Neptune- would be dumb enough to wear a Speedo," Yang explained as she gave Weiss (who glared at her after her 'Neptune isn't that bright' implication) a cheeky grin.

"Yep! And now I have another 5 lien to add to my Emergency Pancake Fund," Nora cheerfully added.

"You have an Emergency Pancake Fund?" Ruby deadpanned.

"Why not? You have an Emergency Cookie Fund," Yang added.

"How do you- wait... _*Gasp*_ YOU'RE the one who's been stealing money from my Fund!" Ruby threw a sandal at her sister's head.

"I'm sorry, Sis. I'll pay you back, I promise," Yang apologized by hugging her adorably pouting little sister.

"How? You just gave your last five lien to Nora," Blake oh-so-helpfully stated, eliciting a glare from Yang (who was now being glared at by Ruby) and an evil snicker from Nora.

"Ahem," Weiss cleared her throat to interrupt. "As entertaining as this has been –and I'm not being sarcastic here- I think we should hurry up and get changed. After all, we have a plan to execute, don't we?" She turned a mischievous smile toward Pyrrha.

"Ooh, Ice Queen's right!" Yang said, ignoring the indignant "Hey!" from said Ice Queen. "Alright, ladies, you know the plan!" she said, shooting Pyrrha a combination mischievous/seductive smile. A blush came to Pyrrha's face as a nervous whine escaped her throat.

 _-Flashback: Thursday evening, team RWBY's room-_

"So then... What're we supposed to do?" Jaune asked the ginger-haired girl guarding the door.

"Hmmm... Don't know, don't care," Nora said with a grin. "Just remember that eavesdropping will have _serious_ consequences," her grin turned evil before slamming the door in the boys' confused and mildly terrified faces.

"Good work Nora," Yang said with a cheeky, approving grin. "That oughta give us plenty of privacy."

"Yeah… But was threatening to break their legs really necessary?" Ruby asked from her bunk.

"I was actually wondering the same thing," Pyrrha asked from her seat on a folding chair in the center of the room.

"'Course it was!" Yang answered on the berserker's behalf. "Boys need to know the consequences before they know to not do something. Say, you're in the shower and he needs to enter the bathroom for whatever reason, he knows not to because if he did you'd slap him into next week, y'know, unless you're _really_ -"

"YANG!" Weiss and Blake both stopped the blonde's train of thought in its tracks, Weiss holding her arms above her head to cover Ruby's ears with her hands. Weiss then looked up when she felt a finger tapping the top of her head.

"CAN I HAVE MY EARS BACK?" Ruby asked loudly due to her ears still being covered.

"Fine. But come down here so it's easier to cover your ears when your sister inevitably starts to say something indecent again," Weiss said as she removed her hands from her young leader's head. Ruby hopped down from the top bunk and sat down next to Weiss.

Yang clapped her hands together to get everyone's attention. "Alright, ladies, down to business. We all know why we're here."

"Uh, actually-" Pyrrha started to raise her hand before being interrupted by the unified voices of RWBYN:

"Jaune and Pyrrha."

"What?!" The redhead (evidently) in question blushed.

"Exactly," Yang continued before turning her attention directly to Pyrrha. "So tell us, Miss Cereal Box, about how long have you had the hots for everyone's second favorite blonde?"

"Are we to assume you mean that _you_ are everyone's favorite blonde?" Weiss asked Yang with a deadpan expression.

"Of course I am!" Yang replied.

"What about Sun?" Blake asked with a raised eyebrow.

"Yeah, Sun's fun!" Nora added before giggling to herself. "Hehe... I rhymed."

"Fighting people in Goodwitch's class is fun, and I've seen her fight, too; she's pretty awesome," Ruby opined.

"Okay okay, fine!" Yang waved her hands to cut the chatter. "Fine. I'm not _everyone's_ favorite blonde. But can we at least agree that regardless of how much fun we might have dueling in Goodwitch's class, that doesn't cancel out her strictness so she's probably _no one's_ favorite blonde aside from Ozpin?"

"Agreed," everyone agreed.

"Okay, good," Yang sighed, her pride now sore.

"You're still my favorite blonde, if that helps," Ruby said, hoping to make her sister feel better.

"It does, Ruby, but since we're sisters, probably not as much as you'd hoped," Yang replied to Ruby's adorableness.

"Alright guys, FOCUS!" Of all people, _NORA_ was the one to get everyone back on topic (an event that was momentous enough that she would later mark it in her calendar).

"Right, right," Yang turned her attention back to the room's resident champion. "So, Champ, how long has Vomit Boy been giving you tingly feelings down in your lady-parts?"

An elbow, belonging to a certain black-haired cat-girl, impacted Yang's ribcage as Weiss could only glare at her with her hands covering her partner's ears. Pyrrha, unsurprisingly, was blushing so hard it's a miracle she didn't pass out, what with all the blood going to her cheeks instead of her brain.

"Alright, alright, I'll stop. Geez, is your elbow a sharpened spike or something?" Yang whined as she grabbed her partner's arm to inspect the pointiness of the offending joint. Blake then yanked her arm back into her own possession, causing Yang to return to the intended topic of the meeting.

With a sigh, Yang looked at Pyrrha. "I'm sorry, Pyrrha," she sat down on a beanbag chair next to the champion. "But honestly, how long have you had a thing for Jaune?"

Pyrrha took a deep breath and sighed, the redness in her cheeks lessened, but not gone. "I-I guess since... since Initiation Day. It felt nice, not being instantly recognized as a tournament champion or some kind of combat school prodigy… or even as the mascot for a breakfast cereal of dubious nutritional value-"

"In retrospect, I'd very much like to apologize for that," Weiss interjected, feeling bad that she might have damaged her friend's love life.

"No, no, it's okay," Pyrrha reassured the guilt-ridden heiress, her ever-forgiving nature shining through. She then felt three pairs of arms wrap around her in a supportive group hug –Ruby on one side, Yang on the other, and Nora hugging from behind- complete with the requisite "Awww."

"So, it's a case of 'love at first sight' then, huh?" Yang asked gently as she was the first to release Pyrrha from the group hug.

"Uh, yeah, I-I guess you could call it that," Pyrrha answered, the ever-present-during-this-girls-only-meeting blush on her face deepening ever so slightly.

"Thought as much," Yang said as she stood up from the beanbag chair.

"What?!" the recently over-explained blush on Pyrrha's face deepened even more (by like, a lot). "Then why'd you ask if you knew?"

"Fact-checking," the apparent boss of the meeting stated. "Now, have you tried making your feelings known to him?"

"W-Well of course I've tried," Pyrrha answered, the normal confidence one would hear in her voice pretty much nonexistent. "I've tried, but either I chicken out, something happens to ruin the moment, or... or he just doesn't get it."

A (thankfully) small part of Weiss's brain wanted to say something to the tune of ' _Now do you see why I call him a dunce?_ ' But that part of her brain shut up when she noticed tears starting to well up in Pyrrha's eyes. Another group hug was initiated immediately, Nora taking the side opposite Ruby, Weiss and Blake putting their hands on Pyrrha's shoulders to show emotional support, and Yang put her hands on Pyrrha's.

Kneeling down to be eye level with Pyrrha, Yang gave her a gentle, sympathetic smile and gently squeezed her hands. "Pyrrha, I know that this is hard for you to talk about, but we need to know as much as possible so we can help you. So, please, tell us how you've tried to get the message across. Like, what kind of hints have you dropped?"

Pyrrha was a little hesitant. Yang had an idea why. "I promise I won't use anything you say against you and/or Jaune in a teasing manner. I promise on Ruby's life!"

"Uh, what?" Ruby really hoped she heard her sister wrong.

Pyrrha hoped that Yang was joking about that last part; although, knowing how protective of her sister Yang is, and knowing Yang in general, it more-than-likely was a joke. The attempt to use humor to lighten her mood was much appreciated by the lovestruck champion.

Pyrrha took a deep breath, mentally preparing herself to go over her failed attempts to get Jaune to see her in a romantic light. The girls, still in the position of their most recent group hug, gave Pyrrha one last squeeze of support, which she was grateful for.

"Well um, I was kinda always nice to him –to the point of making my feelings obvious to everyone BUT him- and then I started tutoring him privately on the roof-"

"Wasn't that, like, a plot point in that really bad 'School Days' anime?" Nora asked, remembering a very negative review she watched online (and also patting herself on the back for remembering the title).

"I never got the chance to watch a lot of anime, becoming famous and all," Pyrrha said before continuing. What followed was the rest of a short-ish but familiar story, the listening of which involved the listeners –RWBYN- almost literally biting their tongues to keep from voicing their thoughts, a perfect example of such thoughts being ' _SERIOUSLY? You used the phrase 'there's plenty of fish in the sea' while you were alone with him and he STILL didn't get the message?!_ '. It should go without saying that this story wasn't exactly doing wonders for the girls' opinions of Jaune.

"... And at the dance, I pretty much had to spell it out for him that being famous, being on a pedestal for as long as I was, leads to loneliness because everyone thinks I'm out of their league," Pyrrha continued. Weiss, understanding such a situation better than anyone else present, gave Pyrrha a hug. "I told him that he was the kind of guy I wished I was at the dance with; y'know, someone who just saw me for me. Then, when he wore that dress, and we danced, I thought I'd finally gotten through to him. But then, after the dance, after plugging the breach in Vale... nothing really changed. The status quo of our relationship remained unchanged."

More group hugging was done to stop the quivering of Pyrrha's lip. After several moments reeling in her tumultuous emotions (being in the caring embrace of her friends definitely helped), Pyrrha was grateful to the girls. "Thank you, everyone. Now, why did I have to go over all that?"

"We needed to know how desperate you were- _OW_!" Yang started before receiving another elbow to the ribs and a punch in the boob from Blake and Weiss, respectively. Yang then kinda collapsed onto the floor.

"What uh, what Yang meant was that uh, now that we know what you've tried, uh..." Weiss started.

"W-we can come up with a plan to get Jaune to notice your feelings in a, uh... at an appropriate level of uh, 'desire', I guess would be the best word?" Blake jumped in.

"Yeah!" Nora jumped in more-or-less literally to throw in her two lien. "Without all the info, we might give you bad advice to be all like 'Please please PLEASE go out with me Jaune! PLEASE! I have nothing else to live for!' _*Fake hysterical sobbing*_ " Nora was on the floor, tightly gripping Pyrrha's ankles and pretending to cry hysterically to illustrate her point before hopping back to her feet and continuing. "Or we could end up advising you to be all like 'Like, I'm like, famous and like, been going to this school for like, a year and I like, still don't have like, a boyfriend. So what do you like, say? You wanna like, go out?'" This point Nora illustrated by sitting next to Pyrrha with her legs crossed, filing her nails, pretending to chew gum and acting completely disinterested in just about everything. Clearly, she was going for 'stereotypical high school hottie who only cares about her looks and social standing'... And she nailed it. She nailed it to the point of it being a little disconcerting, actually.

"Yeah, ow. What Nora said," Yang said as she got up off the floor. "Was punching one of my girls really necessary?" She asked Weiss, massaging the sore breast in question.

Weiss pretended to think for about half a second before giving a deadpan "Hmm, yes."

"Whatever," Yang sighed as she turned her attention back to Pyrrha. "Nora's right. Without knowing all the facts, any plan we came up with to get you and Jaune together-"

"Together-together," Nora interjected.

"Right, together-together," Yang acknowledged. "If we tried to come up with a plan without getting all the facts, you could end up coming off too desperate, possibly even looking like a crazy stalker, you'd end up scaring him off and then you'd be back at square zero... which is further back than being back at square one, so it's worse," Yang explained, seeing some faces confused by 'square zero'. This little explanation within an explanation earned an "Ooooh, okay!" from Ruby before Yang continued. "Either that or you end up seeming not as interested in dating as you really are and he ends up not getting the message and no progress in your relationship with him will be made."

"I just said all that!" Nora complained.

"I know, Nora. I was translating for those present who aren't fluent in Nora-ese," Yang explained.

"Oh. Okeydokey, then," Nora accepted this explanation as if she'd heard it before.

"You don't want either of those outcomes, do you Pyrrha?" Yang asked the redhead. Naturally, Pyrrha shook her head 'No'. "Well, you telling us everything lets us come up with a way to hook you and Jaune up that'll avoid those outcomes. Speaking of which, girls, I hope you don't mind a little bad weather, 'cause it's time for a _brainstorm_! Huh? Huh?"

A collective groan was the group's response to Yang's latest gem (sarcasm) of a pun, or 'crime against the spoken word', as the rest of the group liked to call them. For a few seconds, the room was silent. Yang then looked at Pyrrha.

"Pyrrha, at the dance, did Jaune say anything about how you looked, how you were dressed?" Yang asked, taking a shot in the dark.

"Um, yes. He-he said I looked... That I looked great," Pyrrha answered, smiling a bit at the memory as a light blush graced her cheeks (at this point blushing should pretty much be considered her default complexion at this meeting). The gears in Yang's head started turning.

" _*Gasp*_ I see where you're going with this, Yang!" Ruby and Nora jumped and said simultaneously.

"Do you really?" Yang asked them, already knowing the answer.

"... Uhhh... No," Ruby and Nora answered, deflated.

"Thought so," Yang said before turning back to Pyrrha. "Pyrrha, what were his words, exactly?"

"Uh, he said I looked great, and then he asked if my date would beat him up for saying that," Pyrrha explained with a giggle.

"Oh my gosh, Pyrrha, you looked _beautiful_ in that dress!" Nora squeed, much to the redhead's embarrassment. "It was so pretty; it was fancy without rubbing it in your face that it was fancy and-"

"Breathe, Nora," Blake and Weiss said, putting their hands firmly on Nora's shoulders to stop her excited bouncing.

"Um, t-thank you, Nora," Pyrrha said bashfully.

"Alright alright alright," Yang got everyone's attention back. "Now, Pyrrha, what do you wear when you're training Jaune on the roof?"

"I uh, prefer to think of it as training _with_ Jaune," Pyrrha said, somewhat confused by Yang's new line of questioning. "But uh, to answer your question, usually, Jaune and I train in our uniforms."

"The same uniforms you wear to classes?" Yang wanted to confirm.

"Yes. What other uniform could I be referring to?" Pyrrha asked with a raised eyebrow.

"No need to be snarky, there, Champ," Yang replied with a cheeky grin. "I was just thinking-"

"Stop the presses," Weiss jabbed, earning giggles from Ruby and Nora.

"Shut up," Yang shot back, only then noticing her sister laughing. "Ruby! I'm your sister! Whose side are you on!?" She whined.

"The side of funny," Ruby said between giggles.

"That's my line!" Yang whined as she crossed her arms and pouted.

"Guys! Our current record for staying on topic is like, 3 minutes," Blake scolded.

"We'd still be on topic if Ice Queen hadn't insulted my intelligence," Yang grumbled. Blake then pulled her arm back in a _'Don't make me elbow you in the ribs again'_ kind of way.

"Alright, calm down, Kitty-cat. I'll focus," Yang said to Blake, hoping to avoid another blow to the ribs. She then turned her attention back to the quadruple tournament winner in the room. "So, Pyrrha, you wear your uniform when you're training on the roof with Jaune, right?"

"Yes."

"What about at other times, like in the dorm or on the weekends?" Yang continued her questioning.

"Well, then I just wear my regular outfit, like what I'm wearing now," Pyrrha answered, motioning to her current regular/combat attire.

"And that outfit functions as both your casual and combat attire, right?" Yang inquired.

"Um, yes," Pyrrha replied, now a little embarrassed by her not-so-extensive wardrobe.

"To be fair, that's the case with all of us," Weiss said.

"True, but what I'm getting at here Pyrrha is, was the dance the first time Jaune's seen you dressed in something other than your uniform or combat gear?" Yang asked. In response to this particular question, the girls in the room (minus Yang and Pyrrha) all went "Ah," as realization dawned on them. Now Ruby and Nora knew where Yang was going with this.

Pyrrha thought about it for a second before realization struck her as well. "Huh. You're right, I guess it was."

"Perfect! That gives us everything we need!" Yang declared gleefully.

"Really? How?" Pyrrha asked, hope audible in her voice.

Yang chuckled. "Oh, Pyrrha, Pyrrha, Pyrrha. I don't know how many fanboys or fangirls have told you this, but you are _hot_. Like, _really hot_. And this is _me_ saying you're hot, so that's saying something."

"About you?" Blake quipped without missing a beat.

"Ha-ha," Yang replied to her partner's snark before going back to the flattered champion before her. "Seriously, Pyrrha, you've got curves that could make people stop believing in straight lines, your legs go on for _miles_ , and your everyday outfit consists of a dangerously short skirt and a boob-lifting armored corset. Seriously, _I'm_ having a hard time not looking; I imagine Vomit Boy got a _nice_ eyeful when he was stuck in that tree during Initiation."

Pyrrha honestly didn't know how to feel right now. She should be flattered by the compliments –and she actually kinda was- but given that it's Yang doing the complimenting, the issue was _how_ _flattered_ she should feel. Yang blushed a little when talking about Pyrrha's boobs, and if Yang was blushing, then Pyrrha's face could only be described as a shade of red previously unknown to man- or Faunus-kind. She was honestly kinda afraid –and the rest of the girls half-expected- that Yang was going to stop talking and start making out with Pyrrha. In fact, Blake and Nora had their scrolls at the ready just in case that happened; the former for reasons best known only to herself, the latter for a Plan B she just came up with during Yang's little rant. This Plan B of Nora's was simple: in the event Yang did stick her tongue down Pyrrha's throat, take a picture (or several) and send it to Jaune with the caption _'The blond in this picture coulda been you... YOU FOOL!'_.

Pyrrha remained silent for a few moments, both because she was contemplating how flattered by Yang's compliments she should feel and also because she was mentally preparing herself for the possibility of Yang kissing her. Mistaking Pyrrha's silence as a sign that her inexperience with romance was preventing her from putting the pieces together, Yang decided to provide some more exposition –I mean, explanation.

"Jaune was flirty with you in the locker room on Initiation Day, right Pyrrha?" Yang began. "Y'know, before Ice Queen let him know that you're a big deal?"

"Again, sorry," Weiss interjected, choosing to ignore the Ice Queen comment this time.

Pyrrha was about to forgive her again, but only got off half a _'don't worry about it'_ hand gesture before Yang continued. "Whatever. If Jauney did that, then clearly your attractiveness was not lost on him. But now that he knows what a badass you are, he thinks of you as a warrior first, a partner/fellow student second, and a girl _last_. Well, okay, those first two are probably interchangeable in Vomit Boy's thick skull, but the point is: we gotta remind him that you are a girl –no, a _young woman_ \- first, and and all that other stuff second! Are ya with me!?"

"Yeah!" Nora cheered in a 'you go girl' kind of way.

"Uhhh..." Pyrrha was a little... taken aback, to say the least, by Yang's sudden 'HOO-WAH!' attitude.

"What, you're not with me?" Yang asked.

"No no no! I-it's not that," Pyrrha waved her hands defensively, hoping to not offend the (sometimes literally) fiery blond in any way. "I-i-it's just... H-how are you-"

"You mean 'How are _we_ '" Yang corrected.

"Right. How are uh... _we_ going to uhh... r-remind Jaune t-that I'm a... uhhh..." Pyrrha blushed (duh) as she tried but just couldn't bring herself to quote Yang.

"A vibrant young woman?" Nora said with a flirty smile.

"A vibrant young woman with _wants_ and _needs_?" Yang said with a wink and an eyebrow wiggle. An exasperated sigh could be heard from Weiss as she covered Ruby's ears again.

"Umm... Y-yeah, that," Pyrrha replied, blushing (again: duh).

"Aw, come on, Pyrrha. Weren't you listening?" Yang whined, exasperated.

"I'm sorry!" Pyrrha said, her voice halfway between a whine and a squeak.

"Pyrrha, you are beautiful; that is something we have already established," Yang began, unusually sternly. "The fact that Jaune flirted with you before everyone headed to the cliffs tells us that he _knows_ that you're beautiful. We gotta use your attractiveness to bring those thoughts back to the forefront of his brain, and our trip to the beach provides the perfect opportunity!"

" _*Gulp*_ Uhhh, h-how, exactly?" Pyrrha asked, not-so-suddenly nervous about what Yang's plan would entail (not that she didn't have a pretty good idea already).

"Easy!" Yang answered enthusiastically, the sly grin on her face not making Pyrrha any less nervous. "When we go to the mall tomorrow, we're getting you a sexy little something-something for you to wear for Jaune at the beach, make him go nuts from hormonal overload."

"I don't know," Pyrrha was a little recalcitrant. "It seems a little... manipulative, messing with his hormones like that, doesn't it?"

"Pyrrha, this is a _particularly_ thick-headed teenage boy we're talking about here. Messing with his hormones is just about the only surefire way to get through to him," Yang explained. "We have little choice but to get you into something tight and sexy."

Pyrrha blushed (naturally) as a nervous whine escaped her throat.

"Don't worry, Pyrrha," Weiss interjected. "I'll be there, too. I'll make sure Yang doesn't end up dressing you in anything too skimpy or indecent."

"Weiss, I pretty much _just said_ that skimpy and indecent is the only way for her to get the message across," Yang rebutted. "Know what? I want you to wear something hot for Neptune, unless you're scared to be sexy," she said in a teasing tone, leaving Weiss to blush and stutter.

Blake couldn't help but snicker at the heiress's misfortune of being conned into accepting such an embarrassing challenge, but then Yang turned to her with an evil grin. "Don't think I forgot about you, kitten. You're wearing something sexy for Sun; see if you can't render him completely speechless for at least a full minute."

Nora could be heard busting a gut with laughter as Blake's face reddened substantially. Yang then sat down next to Pyrrha and put her arm over the champion's shoulder.

"Don't you fret, my dear Pyrrha. You've got Beacon's Goddess of Sexiness helping you. I will not lead you astray, my child," Yang said, flashing Pyrrha a sweet smile. Pyrrha's only response to this was to blush ( _AGAIN_ ) and let another nervous whine escape her throat as she wondered what, exactly, she had just gotten herself into.

 _-Flashback over; back to the beach-_

"Wait, N-Nora! Nora, wait, stop! What are you... EEP!"

"Pyrrha! Would ya quit– Stop, don't! Just... C'mere!"

"What, w– Yang, please don't– AAH! Stop! No! Wait!"

"Quit squirming –Hey! Will ya just... Ruby! Hold her –whoa! Hold her down!"

"On it! Wait whoa! Hey! Hold –hold sti-OW! Hold still!"

"Blake! Help m-MEEP! Get back... Grrr... Wait –no, don't!"

"Kinda got –hey! Hands full –derp! G-Get awa-Wait, no!"

"Yang! Would ya –hey! Quit –Get off m-No! Don't! Not tha-EEP!"

"Just –almost... For the love of –Stop moving arou-hey! Just... calm... DOWN!"

These were basically the sounds coming from the Ladies' changing area. It's a good thing the group's spot wasn't set up within earshot, because these exclamations, out of context, could be misconstrued as the sounds of six teenage girls doing something inappropriate in the changing rooms. Some of the... less-than-willing participants of the current horseplay (yeah, let's go with that) were more than aware of that little fact, but they were kind of a bit too preoccupied being less-than-willing participants in said horseplay to really have time to worry about it.

After what just happened in the changing room and an agreement to NEVER SPEAK OF IT AGAIN EVER, the girls, with varying degrees of willingness (i.e. sentiments of "Alright! Let's do this thing!" to "No! I can't go out like this! You can't make me! NO!", and everything in between), started heading back with the intent of dazzling the boys [A/N: I cannot believe I just used the word "dazzling"].

"Neptune, over here!" Jaune said, the bluehead throwing the Frisbee his way, over Zwei's head.

"Hey boys, we're back!" Yang sang as she and the girls approached.

"Bark bark!" Zwei barked excitedly as he ran into Ruby's arms as fast as his stubby little legs could carry him.

"Zwei!" Ruby giggled as she happily accepted a flurry of licks from her dog. "I wasn't gone that long!"

Jaune, who had been watching the fast-approaching Frisbee flying through the air, turned his head toward Yang. Upon his brain registering the girls in swimsuits, Jaune stopped running literally mid-stride only for the Frisbee to hit him in the back of the head, knocking him off what little balance he had. This led to a faceplant to break his fall, a faceplant directly into Yang's boobs.

" _Ooh_ , why Jaune, I had no idea you felt this way," Yang said seductively, a half-flirty/half-prankster smile on her face as she extricated Jaune from her cleavage. "But I'm afraid you're gonna have to buy me dinner first."

Jaune, being someone with a definite sense of shame, blushed profusely. He then proceeded to _back the truck up_ to put some interpersonal space between himself and Yang before going on to try and explain away the situation/defend himself, but all that came out was some embarrassed and unintelligible stammering. The fact that Yang was failing to suppress her laughter only made it that much worse.

"Oh, relax, Vomit Boy. I'm only teasin'," Yang said, giggling. The response she got was something halfway between a groan and a nervous whine escaping his throat.

"Hey, Jaune!" Neptune's voice was heard as he and the rest of the guys caught up. "Sorry about that Frisbee to the head."

"Hey, boys," Yang purred in an _extremely_ seductive voice. "So, how do we look?"

This time around, looking at the girls in all their swimsuit-clad beauty was a bit easier for Jaune, seeing as the rest of the guys were participating as well. Also, as much as Jaune hated himself for thinking so, it helped a lot that he now had a choice of three meat shields for when (with his luck) something stupid inevitably happened.

Given how... well acquainted Jaune and Yang had just gotten, it made sense to see what she was wearing first. Her swimsuit was a plain white bikini, the top piece being secured behind her back and behind her neck, and the bottom piece had string knots at the hips, helping keep the bikini bottom on her, well, bottom. Not as flashy as one would expect from her, but the amount of skin (and cleavage) she was showing certainly lived up to expectations.

Jaune decided next to see what Ruby was wearing. She was wearing a very conservative two-piece. It was a darker purple with polka-dots in two shades of pink, black trim and two-inch wide black bands bordering Ruby's midriff. It was cute more than anything else, a perfect fit for the little reaper still in the middle of a flurry of licks from her loveable doggie. It was a sight that could cause cuteness-overload, if one believes such a thing to exist.

If Jaune had to take a guess, he'd say Ruby's swimsuit was a compromise between her and Yang; Yang, being as protective of her sister as she is, probably wanted to get Ruby a one-piece to minimize the possibility of any guys on the beach thinking of trying anything. As much as the thought of some poor schmuck sparking the wrath of Yang Xiao Long terrified him, Jaune –having a couple younger sisters of his own- could certainly understand Yang's point of view.

"S-So, Neptune, h-how do I look?" Weiss's oddly timid voice snapped Jaune out of his reverie.

"You look _*ahem*_ you look great. Really," Neptune managed to smile and articulate despite clearly having trouble retaining the ability to think. He wasn't lying; Weiss did look good in her swimwear. She had her hair done up in twintails as opposed to her signature side ponytail and a light blush graced her cheeks. Her swimsuit was a baby blue two-piece. It had a white floral trim, white ruffled miniskirt and a large white bow on the middle of the chest. Weiss's blush deepened ever-so-slightly at Neptune's compliment.

Blake, meanwhile, had essentially rendered Sun utterly speechless. Her bikini was simply black (in fact, the boys would later learn that that particular shade of black was in fact called 'simply black'), as probably should've been expected from Blake. Her bikini bottom was wrapped in a small skirt-like thing that Jaune and Sun were pretty sure was what is known as a 'sarong' that clipped on the right, while the top piece had long, tapering... cups that were crossed right around Blake's collarbone before forming a loop that was tied in back of her neck like Yang's, leaving a generous cleavage window that was a major contributing factor to both the blush on Blake's face as well as Sun's current inability to produce a coherent sentence. What was possibly even more noticeable than _Blake_ of all people wearing something with a cleavage window (or, in Sun's case, 'equally noticeable') was that she wasn't wearing her bow, leaving her cat ears visible. They were cute and fluffy-looking, and they seemed to be twitching a little in response to Blake's own nervousness.

Suddenly, as a dull throbbing pain flared up in his forehead before almost immediately subsiding, Jaune knew that it was now time to see what Nora was wearing (and hopefully prevent her from possibly literally talking Ren's ear off). Nora's swimsuit was a two-piece, a bit less conservative than Ruby's, but not as revealing as, say, Yang's. Both pieces had horizontal stripes in two shades of pink with hot pink trim. It was then a thought popped into Jaune's head.

"Hey Nora, where's Pyrrha?" He asked.

"Huh?" Nora looked momentarily confused, before looking around for a moment. She then let out an exasperated sigh, walked over behind Yang, and then pulled out a struggling Pyrrha.

"Ta-da!" Nora sang as she pretended to be the lovely assistant on a game show, presenting Pyrrha like a prize. "Whaddya think, Jaune?"

If Jaune's brain was a computer, that moment would've been when the computer froze. Pyrrha, like the rest of the girls, was wearing a bikini. It was her signature red, with gold trim. The two triangles on her chest did not really meet in the middle; rather, they were held together by a small brass ring. Where Yang's bikini bottom had string knots on the sides, Pyrrha's bikini bottom was held together by a brass ring on each side. If one did the math, they'd work out that Pyrrha's bikini actually showed maybe 1% –give or take- _more_ skin than _Yang's_.

In addition to wearing the (marginally) most revealing swimsuit of all, Pyrrha's hair was different. Instead of her usual waist-length ponytail, she was wearing her hair down. She still had on her bronze circlet, however. With Nora in a 'presenter' pose, Pyrrha was rubbing her left arm in embarrassment, a deep blush on her face and her eyes unable to meet Jaune's.

"Um... J-Jaune...? C-could you please stop staring?" She asked timidly.

"Huh? Oh! Uh... S-sorry," Jaune snapped out of his stupor, his face flushed. Rubbing the back of his head, Jaune tried to prevent an awkward silence from forming. "Um, y-you look great."

"You-you really think so?" Pyrrha looked him in the eye, the corners of her mouth moving upward into a timid smile.

"'Course he does!" Yang interjected, the unexpected interruption causing both Jaune and Pyrrha to jump. "Now c'mon! The beach isn't gonna enjoy itself ya know!"

Following her with their eyes, Jaune and Pyrrha saw that the others were already setting up the volleyball net. Jaune smiled at Pyrrha. "Shall we?"

"Lead the way," Pyrrha replied with a giggle.

"Alright! How you guys wanna do this?" Sun asked, bouncing the ball in his hand. "Five on five, maybe?"

Yang tapped her chin for a moment in thought. "Hmmmm... How 'bout boys vs. girls?" She said with an eyebrow wiggle.

"Well that's no fair," Sun rebutted. "There's six of you and only four of us –Whoa!" He exclaimed as he narrowly dodged Zwei going for the ball in his hand.

"Bark bark!"

Ruby giggled. "That's okay, Sun. I think I'll sit this one out. Someone apparently has to keep Zwei from going after the ball."

"Bark!"

"Okay, that helps, but..."

"I'll keep score and referee," Blake volunteered.

"Okay, that leaves us with an even 4-on-4, how about we play 3-on-3? Each team can have someone in reserve, swap out players every once in a while," Jaune posited.

"Ooh, look at the big brain on Arc," Yang teased. "Alright, boys, prepare for a good old-fashioned Xiao Long _thrashin'_!" She entered into competitive trash-talk mode as she, Nora, and Weiss took to the improvised court opposite Jaune, Sun and Neptune.

"Never underestimate an Arc, Yang," Jaune fired back, quoting one of his father's favorite catch phrases. "Your serve. Ladies first, after all."

"Bad idea, Jaune," Ruby warned from the sidelines.

Before Jaune could react to the little reaper's comment, however, he was hit in the face _HARD_ by Yang's high-subsonic serve, the impact knocking him back and leaving his head buried in the sand.

"Point, us!/Point, girls," Yang and Blake said simultaneously, the latter putting a 1 on the girls' side of the scoreboard that the manufacturer of the set was kind enough to include.

"Jaune, are you okay?" Pyrrha ran over to check on him, just as Sun and Neptune managed to yank him up by his arms, getting his head out of the sand.

" _*Coughing*_ Yeah, yeah, I'm fine. Although I think I've got either a rock or a hermit crab lodged in my nose." Jaune said. He then snorted like he was going to hawk Remnant's largest loogie, and spit out a wad onto the ground in front of him. "Hey, look at that; it was both." He then gently picked up and moved the hermit crab out of the way. "Sorry about that, little guy."

"Come on, Jaune. Why don't you let Ren take the next round?" Pyrrha said to her partner. Ren handed his (badass) armless sunglasses to Blake to hold for him before walking over, hi-fiving Jaune to tag in.

Pyrrha held Jaune's arm as she helped him over to the sidelines. As she helped him sit down (despite his protests of being fine), Jaune noticed three things: first, his sinuses felt just a little bit clearer now than they did this morning; Jaune silently thanked the hermit crab for that. The second thing Jaune noticed was that Pyrrha was sitting very close to him and still holding onto his arm. This led directly into the third and most important/alarming thing Jaune noticed: Pyrrha's breasts were pressed right up against his arm.

Jaune's brain was desperately trying to run at a million miles an hour, but the gears seemed to be getting stuck on something, that something being Pyrrha's chest.

 _'Does she realize what's happening!?'_ Jaune asked himself, trying to rationalize the situation. _'She has to, right? There's no way she'd be pressing herself up against ME of all people, right? I mean, not that I'm complaining –wait, what!? Where the hell did THAT come from?! I-I mean, sure, it does feel nice –wait, no no NO! I can't think things like that! Bad brain! Stop it! Okay, okay, okay. May-maybe she hasn't noticed; I mean, she seemed super worried about me getting hit in the face by a volleyball going Mach 1.3-DERP!'_ His panicked internal rant/freak-out (the entirety of which only took about 1.25 seconds in real time) was interrupted by what he felt was probably the absolute last thing he needed right now: Pyrrha suddenly pressing herself up against him even more as she raised one of her arms and cheered for the girls' team. Despite being heavily distracted by the sensation of breast pressed on his arm, the tactical part of Jaune's brain managed to work for about a millisecond. That one millisecond of higher mental functioning was enough for Jaune to realize that he could distract himself from his own ungentlemanly thoughts by also cheering for the game, which he proceeded to do posthaste.

If Jaune's thoughts were panicked and disorganized, Pyrrha was most definitely NOT doing much better. To wit, these are her internal thoughts during the above 1.25 seconds: _'Sweet fiery Dust I can't believe I'm actually doing this! Oh man, this is pitiful! Am I seriously pressing my breasts up against him and using concern for his health as an excuse to pretend that I HAVEN'T noticed that I'm PRESSING MY BREASTS UP AGAINST HIM?! Oh, Sweet Mother of Mantle, am I really that desperate!? Why in the world did I ever listen to YANG?! Ohhhhh, I wonder what's going through Jaune's mind right now-no, no, no, I don't think I could handle it! Okayokayokayokay, I need to find something to distract me from these thoughts or I'm going to have a total panic attack! Wait, Nora's always a good distraction. Yeah!'_

"Come on, Nora! Show 'em who's Queen of the Castle!" Pyrrha cheered for her friend before detecting the mistake she made. _'Nope, nope, nope, SO MUCH NOPE! I just pressed myself up against him even more oh Dust oh Dust OH... Dust, is his arm made out of sculpted marble? Oh my, I could get used to this. I-I mean, if Jaune would be okay with it. Wait; is he okay with it now? He's cheering for the boys right now, so he's not complaining... And he's not trying to remove his arm, maybe he likes it? Or maybe he hasn't even noticed oh Dust! No, no, NO! Stop thinking that way Nikos! Where's that tournament-winning confidence?! Just-just focus on the volleyball game. The physical contact will be a subtle but effective signal; Yang knows what she's talking about. Besides, this beach trip just started.'_

 _-Several rounds, numerous tag-in/tag-outs and three canine interruptions later-_

The score was all tied up at 14 points, and the gang had decided that the next point wins; after all, there's more to do at the beach than just play volleyball, right?

Despite this ostensibly being nothing more than a friendly game of beach volleyball, the atmosphere among the group was tense. With this last point, the stakes were high: the girls were playing for the right to rub it in the guys' faces that they lost to a bunch of girls, and knowing this, the guys were playing for their dignity.

On the girls' side: Pyrrha, Nora, and Yang. On the guys': Jaune, Ren, and Neptune. Blake was still keeping score, Ruby was still keeping Zwei from chasing the volleyball (as she and Yang had the highest success rates with that task thus far), and Weiss and Sun were chilling on the sidelines, cheering on their respective teams.

The ball was served. For a full five minutes, neither team would let the ball yield to gravity. Six minutes in, it was obvious that fatigue was starting to set in on both teams. It was at this point, just when they were starting to get tired and their focus began to waver, that the boys noticed a certain phenomenon relating to their female opponents. A certain... bouncy phenomenon, to be precise.

Jaune couldn't speak for the other guys (except maybe Neptune, because despite being pretty close to Weiss now, chasing anything that's wearing a skirt is a hard habit to break) but he could swear that time slowed down as the ball flew over the net to the girls' side of the court. Jaune saw the world in slo-mo as he watched Pyrrha jump up to intercept. Jaune's subjective time dilation continued as he watched Pyrrha momentarily stop in midair at the apex of her jump while, thanks to inertia, her chest continued moving. When Pyrrha bent forward in the air and spiked the ball, physics continued to use her upper body like a pair of hypnotist's watches, rendering Jaune's brain like pudding.

Despite his brain not being fully functional, Jaune's survival instinct managed to momentarily overpower his hormones, just as the ball left Pyrrha's hand. Jaune tried desperately to block, but the ball hit the sand, hard enough to leave foot-and-a-half deep crater.

"WOOHOO! We won! We won!" Yang exclaimed as she jumped up and down, her large endowments jumping just as much as during the game itself.

"Duuuudes! What happened?" Sun asked/whined at Neptune, who then put his arm over the blond Faunus's shoulder.

"Ya really wanna know what happened?" Neptune asked the curious and slightly disappointed blond.

"Yes!"

"Okay," the blue-haired boy said before pulling Sun closer to whisper in his ear. "You try running, jumping and diving after a ball without a half a second to catch your breath and your opponents' boobs are all bouncy and constantly breaking your concentration."

Neptune then left the now-blushing Sun with a pat on the back, heading over to Weiss, who was waving the bluehead over, presumably to offer some form of friendly consolation over the defeat. Sun stood there for a second, just staring out into space with a light blush coloring his cheeks. A voice brings him back down to Remnant.

"Remnant to Sun. Come in Sun. What did he say?"

That was Blake who asked that question. Neptune (the lousy sneak) had left Sun standing there, spaced out like a moron, thinking about bouncing boobs... right next to Blake, whose bathing suit –as stressed earlier- had a cleavage window! Not exactly a juxtaposition that works in Sun's favor (at least he didn't think so).

"Oh! Uh, nothing! No, uh, he-he didn't uh... He didn't say anything-OW! Hey!" Sun's stuttering response was interrupted by the volleyball hitting him in the head. It wasn't as hard as when Jaune took it to the face, but still.

About twelve seconds earlier, Jaune was sitting on the ground next to the hole in the sand with the ball at the bottom. Deciding he might as well, Jaune pulled the ball out of the ground. Noticing Sun standing stiff as a board next to Blake, Jaune threw it at the 'Ab King' (a nickname Sun had chosen for himself; why he didn't choose something more badass like 'Abdominus Maximus' or something, Jaune would never understand). Naturally, because the universe enjoys physical slapstick humor, as soon as the volleyball left Jaune's hand was when Sun seemed to wake up, and then impact.

After a chuckle and a wave, Jaune was about to get up when Pyrrha jogged around the net over to him (with, of course, the accompanying breast bounce that Jaune will never again be able to _not_ notice)... before falling into the ditch she herself created with her game-winning spike.

"Pyrrha!?" Jaune managed to catch his partner before she faceplanted into the sand. Holding her in his arms, Jaune couldn't help but notice how soft and smooth her skin was and how it glistened with sweat. He could also smell her from this angle: an intoxicating combination of pineapple body wash, strawberry shampoo, lemon conditioner and sweat that was just so uniquely Pyrrha, it almost made Jaune hungry for a fruit salad. And while his nose was busy, it was thanks to his eyes that Jaune had a thought: _'Huh, I can't believe I almost forgot how beautiful she is.'_

Sweat, Schnee Spice antiperspirant (ironic combination there), a mixture of peppermint toothpaste and lime breath mint, baby powder, and grapefruit-scented baby shampoo; these were the scents Pyrrha registered when Jaune caught her after she (not entirely) accidentally tripped in the hole she made in the beach. Aside from that, the only other sensation that mattered to Pyrrha was how safe and secure she felt in Jaune's arms. Not realizing that they've been in this position for only a quarter of a second, Pyrrha decided to speak before things got awkward.

"Jaune, are you okay?" She asked.

"Yeah. I was actually gonna ask you the same thing," Jaune replied.

"Yeah, I guess I'm not as used to walking around barefoot as I thought," Pyrrha said with a light blush and a light chuckle.

"That and that hole is pretty big and deep," Jaune said. "But I doubt you'd have been any more stable in your usual combat high-heels."

Pyrrha laughed at his joke. "You're right," she said as she sat next to him.

"Yeah, I was actually gonna fill in the hole so no one would trip," Jaune said as he started moving large handfuls of sand into the crater.

"Oh, here, let me help," Pyrrha said as she began helping him move displaced sand back into its pre-Nikos Meteor Spike position. She felt proud of herself for coming up with such a badass name all by herself.

"So, what're you gonna call that move, huh? The Nikos Meteor Spike, maybe?" Jaune asked.

"Um, yes, actually," Pyrrha answered, a bit surprised at how much she and Jaune were on the same wavelength. "You hit the nail right on the head."

"Or spiked the ball right into the ground, as the case may be," Jaune replied with a subtly forced chuckle, realizing all too late that that joke sounded way funnier in his head. _'Oh, MAN that was lame! Well, she's laughing; maybe it wasn't so bad. Eh, even if she's just humoring me, I'll take it.'_

Pyrrha was indeed laughing. She had a feeling that Jaune was mentally berating himself right now for the lameness he perceived in his joke, but she honestly thought it was funny. Whether that was because of her feelings for him or because of her own sense of humor was up in the air.

As they were finishing up filling in the crater, their hands touched. It seemed for a moment as if someone had pushed _'Pause'_ on the world... or at least it woulda seemed that way if it weren't for a certain hyperactive, bubbly ginger.

"Oh man, are you guys building sandcastles without me?" Nora whined, startling Jaune and Pyrrha.

"Oh! Uh, n-no Nora," Jaune replied. "We were just filling Pyrrha's hole –WAIT! That-I mean... THAT DIDN'T COME OUT RIGHT! W-what I-What I meant was..."

"WEWEREJUSTFILLINGINTHEHOLEIMADEINTHEGROUNDWITHTHATLASTSPIKEBECAUSEITRIPPEDINITANDWEDIDN'TWANTANYONEELSETOTRIPINIT!" Pyrrha panted heavily after saying all that on one breath to save Jaune's bacon, her face just as red as his.

"Y-Yeah, what she said," Jaune said, this time being extremely careful in choosing his words. He then tried to find where the only other male of team JNPR was. "Uh, hey Ren! Where'd you put that sandcastle stuff?"

"Ren's asleep," Blake answered in the stoic's stead, eyes not moving from her book. She then pointed over to a duffle bag. "The sandcastle stuff's in there."

"There ya go, Nora. Why don'tcha go be Queen of the Castle?" Jaune said, before adding under his breath: "And for the love of all that is good in this world, PLEASE don't tell Yang about that poor choice of words."

Nora gave a shrug, not really acknowledging Jaune's request to not tell Yang about his little slip of the tongue, and skipped off toward the duffle bag Blake pointed to. Sure, Nora never said she would tell Yang, but it was the fact that at the same time she never said that she _wouldn't_ say anything that made Jaune nervous. As if Yang didn't already have enough ammo to tease him with.

"So, uh, _*ahem*_ ," Jaune could taste the awkward in the momentary silence that had sprouted between him and Pyrrha, and he was DESPERATE to nip it in the bud. "So, um, w-what you uh... What-What do you wanna do now?"

Pyrrha silently thanked whatever deity(s) existed in the four kingdoms that one of them was brave enough to break the awkward silence that had developed. "I-I'm not sure. What do you want to do?"

"I don't know," Jaune replied while stretching his back a little. "I'm still a little worn out from that game. You really brought your A-game, you know that? Come to think of it, do you even _have_ a B-game, Pyrrha?"

Pyrrha laughed and blushed just a bit at the compliment. "I don't know. After training for and winning four tournaments, I think anything less than A-game has been thoroughly trained out of me."

"Makes sense," Jaune shrugged. "But either way, I'm sure soon enough it'll be five tournaments," he said, smiling at his partner.

"Thank you," she replied, a smile on her face and her blush deepening ever so slightly. "How about I get us a couple of sodas?" she asked as she got up to her feet.

"Sounds good," he said as he watched her walk toward the coolers, her hips swaying in a way that was just hypnotic. _'She's_ _gotta_ _be doing that on purpose. Either that or bikinis just activate some kinda hidden sexy mode inside girls' brains.'_

After checking out Pyrrha's posterior for maybe a full second longer than he thought he should've, Jaune got up to go to his towel. The longer he sat where he was, the higher the risk of getting sand in his skivvies, and Jaune knew from experience (some stories are best left untold) that it is NOT pleasant. Had Jaune not been looking at Pyrrha's behind –and then shaking his head to try and stop such thoughts- as she was bent over the cooler looking for beverages, there's a slight possibility that he would've noticed something a little... off, about the placement of his and Pyrrha's towels, 'slight' being the operative word.

Jaune and Pyrrha's towels were right next to each other's, which in and of itself wasn't all that unusual or unexpected; Jaune and Pyrrha were so rarely seen apart, they were practically joined at the hip. Their towels were set close together, closer together than compared to the others' towels. It wasn't a difference that could easily be seen with the naked eye, if at all. In addition to that, Pyrrha and Jaune's towels were set a little further away from the rest of the group; again, not at a distance that could be noticed with a cursory glance. Put together, one wouldn't notice it with their eyes, but being slightly closer together while being slightly further away from the others will feel just a bit more... intimate. That was the plan, anyway.

"Sorry for the wait," Pyrrha said as she sauntered over, hips still sashaying in that mesmerizing way. She was carrying a can of People Like Grapes soda in one hand and People Like Diet Grapes in the other. "The diet ones were all the way on the bottom."

"Well that just means yours will be that much colder and more refreshing," Jaune said with a smile as he took the non-diet can that she offered him. "Why am I not surprised that you got the diet?"

"What? It's healthier," Pyrrha defended, slightly embarrassed at the idea of being that predictable. She then sat down on her towel next to him.

Jaune chuckled as he opened his can of soda. "Hey, I never said it was a bad thing. We need you in tip-top shape for the tournament. The whole school's counting on you."

Pyrrha, despite already having four (albeit smaller) tournament victories to her name, felt just a bit uncomfortable accepting such praise from Jaune. "I'll only be competing in the first-year division, so it'll only be those in our year, uh, counting on me."

"Oh. Is that how it works?"

"Yeah. Tournaments are usually set up like that to keep things fair," Pyrrha explained as she opened her soda. "They wouldn't find it fair to pair you off against an upperclassman with more training than you, like a fourth-year about to graduate, or worse, a fully licensed Huntsman."

"Well, let's be honest: it'd be unfair of them to pair me off against another first-year," Jaune said, sounding dejected and a little bitter.

"Oh, Jaune, stop it," Pyrrha replied, not wanting to hear Jaune's self-deprecation. "You've improved a lot this year. You know you have."

Jaune sighed. There was no arguing with Pyrrha when she used that tone of voice. He knew she was right. As much as he wished it had been more, he had improved significantly this year, which is better than nothing at all. With a chuckle, he raised his soda and smiled. "Well, that's because I've got the best partner and personal tutor I could've asked for."

"Thank you," Pyrrha said as she also raised her soda, and they silently toasted to their friendship and continued partnership. They then took a long, refreshing swig from their sodas.

After that private toast, Jaune and Pyrrha sat in comfortable silence if a few minutes, just enjoying each other's company. After a while, Jaune looked over to his right, and saw something that caused him to cock an eyebrow.

"Huh."

"What?" Pyrrha asked, curious to see what Jaune was looking at.

"I wonder what Nora and Ruby are doing over there?" Jaune said, pointing to the two energetic girls in question.

"Should we go see what they're up to?" Pyrrha asked.

Jaune shrugged. "If only for curiosity's sake," he said as he got up and offered Pyrrha his hand.

"Okay then," Pyrrha said as she took his hand. This time, the tingly feeling she usually got from physical contact with Jaune was stronger than normal and, unbeknownst to her, she wasn't the only one who felt it.

The two then walked over. When they got to where the two owners of oversized weapons were, what they saw was... unexpected, but in a good way. Like in a 'Thank Dust, we were picturing something much worse' kind of way.

"Uhhh..." Jaune began.

"SHHHHHHHHHHHHH!" Nora shushed him, ironically being even louder than he was. "Don't wake him up. We're not done burying him!"

It was true. Ren was asleep, still wearing his armless sunglasses. But instead of sleeping on his towel, soaking in the sun on the road to a very painful sunburn, Ren was currently in a very large hole (jeez, what is it with this beach trip and big holes in the ground?). His lower extremities were covered in a thick layer of sand, and Nora, Ruby, and Zwei were now working on covering Ren's upper body.

"Okay then," Jaune said, accepting this shenanigan simply due to the all the hilarious possibilities. "What're you gonna do once he's all buried?"

"Dunno yet," Nora replied, dumping another plastic bucketful of sand onto Ren's torso. "I was thinking of sculpting a fat, hairy, naked guy with Ren's exposed head on top and nothing but a seashell downstairs."

The four of them laughed at that mental image. Jaune nearly did a spit-take with his soda, but managed to keep it in (after all, it'd be a waste of perfectly good soda). Ruby then voiced her idea. " _*Laughing*_ Well, I was thinking we could do some kind of Grimm, like a Beowolf or an Ursa. We could find some twigs for the bone spikes or something."

More laughter followed as yet another hilarious mental image was formed. Jaune, however, had the best idea yet. " _*Still laughing*_ Okay, okay, okay, how about this: a hot mermaid with really big boobs; like, bigger boobs than Yang's?"

By this point, Ruby was rolling around on the ground, gripping her sides from laughing so hard. Pyrrha was having trouble standing up and had to lean on Jaune for support. Nora's reaction was the best of all: " _I_ _LIKE_ _IT_! Now THAT is why you're our fearless leader, there, Jaune! That's BRILLIANT!"

"Bark bark!" Even Zwei seemed to agree.

Jaune blushed a little and rubbed the back of his head at being called 'fearless leader'. "Okay, just let us finish our sodas and Pyrrha and I'll help you guys make this hilarious dream a reality!" he said before chugging down the remaining third of his People Like Grapes. Pyrrha, while impressed by Jaune's ability to make even that sound like a fearless leader-style inspirational speech, finished her own soda as well.

"Here, lemme take care of that for ya," Jaune said as he took her empty soda can and went over to where the group had brought some trash bags. Blake informed him which one was for cans and which was for plastic.

"Hey, Pyrrha, we're gonna need water if we're gonna sculpt a sexy mermaid body for Ren. Can you bring us some water?" Nora asked as Jaune left, holding a plastic bucket out for her.

"Okay," Pyrrha said as she grabbed the bucket and walked to the water.

After about an hour, a mermaid made out of sand was nearing completion. It (or 'she'?) had a waist that was even slimmer than even Ren's, and the 'sand-boobs' –as they were dubbed- were each shaping up to be bigger than Ren's head. As such, for at least today, Ren would end up dethroning Yang as the person with the largest breasts in the group.

"Oh! I got an idea!" Jaune said as he quickly got up. "Finish up the sand-boobs; I'll be right back. Actually, Pyrrha, come with me."

"Uh, OK, what are we-WHOA!" Pyrrha yelped as she was yanked to her feet as Jaune ran toward the water, plastic bucket in one hand and Pyrrha's hand in the other. Nora and Ruby exchanged confused looks, then shrugged it off and continued to give a sleeping Ren the best boob job this side of Vacuo.

A few minutes later, Jaune and Pyrrha returned, and Jaune pulled a pair of seashells from the bucket. "If there's one thing every mermaid needs, it's a seashell bikini. Nora, why did you put nipples on the sand-boobs?"

It was true; there was a pebble on each sand-boob, clearly serving the function Jaune described. "Uh... To help you accurately center the seashells...?"

"While I don't believe you, Nora, I do think you might be right about that centering thing."

Jaune then put the two seashells on Ren's sandy mounds, centered on the pebbles. Even with how big the sand-boobs were, the seashells Jaune got were on the smaller side –really just big enough to cover the nipple pebbles and not much else- for increased comedic value. "We also found some kelp we can use as bikini strings."

With their work complete, the four of them (Zwei had gone to play Frisbee with some of the others earlier) stood up to examine the result... and promptly doubled over laughing.

Nora ran over to her bag and came back with her scroll to take pictures. The impromptu photo shoot, in which all of the Beacon students present participated, lasted for several minutes and by the end of it, enough comedy had happened to massively boost the Comedy Channel's ratings had these shenanigans been televised on said channel. Among the photos, the universal favorites were one of Jaune pretending to grabs Ren's sand-boobs with a huge, goofy smile on his face and one of Yang with one hand on a sand-boob and the other hand on one of her own breasts for size comparison. For the record, the group's attempts to dethrone Yang in the cup-size department were, in fact, successful.

Nora was currently posing for another picture with the Sand-Mer-Ren, lying next to him with one hand reaching across to the sand-boob on the side opposite her's, leaning her face close to his with an intentionally over-exaggerated kissy face. Clearly, she was trying to evoke/parody the popular 'Girl on Girl is Hot' trope (although, is it really a parody if Ren really could pass for a pretty girl?).

"Uh, Nora, what are you doing?"

"WAAAAHH!" Nora reacted, jumping back. "Uh, Ren, how long have you been awake?"

"About 7 seconds," the apparently-now-awake Ren answered.

"Oh," Nora said. "You wanna come out? I can dig you out," she said as she moved to dig him out.

"No, no, you guys are having fun. Don't stop enjoying yourselves on my account," Ren insisted. "Besides, it's nice and cozy under here. Although, Nora, before you go do anything else, would you put some sunblock on my face?"

"Oh. Okeydoke," Nora obliged, going to go grab a bottle of sunblock, returning, and then applying it liberally to her childhood friend's face.

"There we go! No gross, peeling skin for you!" Nora announced after finishing with the sunblock.

"Thanks, Nora," Ren said, before looking around at the sand sculpture for which he served as the head. "Wow, you put a lot of work into this, didn't you?"

"Yeah, the mermaid thing was Jaune's idea. So was the seashell bikini," Nora said, unknowingly (or maybe not) making Jaune feel like she just threw him under the bus.

Jaune rubbed the back of his head and let out a nervous chuckle. "Sorry, Ren. Rule of Funny, y'know?"

"No worries," Ren said. This whole conversation was a bit of a learning experience for everyone but Nora: they were learning that Ren can be a _really_ laid back guy. It was kinda fascinating, really.

"Why're you guys still standing there?" Ren asked. "I'm fine. Go. Disperse. Have fun. I can probably get out by myself if I need to."

"You sure, Renny?" Nora asked.

"Yes, Nora. Go build yourself a castle, declare yourself Queen," Ren reassured her.

"Okeydokey!" Nora chirped as she scampered off with the plastic buckets and shovels.

"Hey, wait for me! I wanna build sandcastles too!" Ruby followed Nora, Zwei following Ruby.

"You sure you'll be okay, man?" Jaune asked. "You're buried in sand, you know."

"Yes, Jaune. Like I said, it's cozy under here," Ren answered. "I can relax, enjoy the view. I can even go back to sleep if I want."

"Alright. We'll check on you in maybe an hour, make sure you're not getting a sunburn or a hermit crab making a home in your nose," Jaune said as he and Pyrrha walked back toward their towels.

"Sounds good," Ren replied. He then looked at the sand-boobs so close to his face. _'Shame these are only made out of sand,'_ he thought to himself. _'I'm at almost the perfect motorboating angle here.'_

On their way back to their spot, Jaune and Pyrrha passed by Weiss and Neptune. Weiss was lying on her stomach, next to Neptune.

"Say, Neptune, would you mind putting some sunblock on my back? I don't want to get burned," she said, making some pouty lips to make it that much harder for Neptune to say no. The timing of her request was noticed by Pyrrha, almost certainly a signal.

"Uh, y-yeah, sure," Neptune stuttered and blushed a little as he began to rub the lotion onto her skin.

Pyrrha lay down on her towel, a little nervous about what she was about to do. She slowly undid the back of her bikini top, moved her hair out of the way, and took a deep breath to calm down. "Um, Jaune, w-would you mind putting some tanning lotion on my back?"

"Um, y-yeah, of course," Jaune replied, blushing as badly as Pyrrha was. He took the lotion bottle, squirted some into his hand, and began rubbing it thoroughly into Pyrrha's skin. As he rubbed the lotion onto Pyrrha's back, Jaune's hands went into a sort of autopilot mode as he felt stress and tension in the toned muscles of Pyrrha's back. Purely on instinct, Jaune began massaging Pyrrha's back.

" _Oh_ ," Pyrrha moaned in pleasure as she felt stress that she didn't even know she'd been carrying just melt away. "Jaune – _mmm_ \- w-when did – _oh_ \- when did you learn...?"

"Huh? Oh, yeah," Jaune noticed what he'd been doing the whole time. "My two older sisters are licensed Huntresses, and my dad taught me how to give them a massage to help them relieve stress whenever they came home from a mission. It kinda got hard for him to do it after an old Beowolf wound on his arm started acting up," he explained as he continued working what Pyrrha could only describe as 'magic' on her back.

"Really? _Mmmm_ , that feels good," Pyrrha found Jaune's story interesting, but was in too much of a state of bliss to really form any other coherent sentence. However, there was one thought that managed to survive the sea of good vibes. _'How is this the first time this has come up? If his father taught him how to give massages, why didn't he tell Jaune that he could use that to pick up girls? Not that I'm complaining, but still!'_

While Pyrrha was melting under Jaune's hands and fingers, Jaune –or rather, the one part of his brain that was not mesmerized by the feeling of Pyrrha's soft, smooth skin in his hands- was actually kicking himself a bit. _'Wow. She's got a lot of stress in these muscles,'_ he thought to himself. _'Guess it makes sense, though; she's been training to be a Huntress for years. Add in those tournaments and her body's probably been through hell.'_ As he finished rubbing lotion on her back, Jaune gave out a dejected sigh.

"What's wrong, Jaune?" Pyrrha asked, concern evident both in her voice and on her face.

"Huh? Oh, uh..." Jaune hadn't realized that he'd sighed out loud. He wanted to wave it off as nothing, but with her eyes on him, Jaune knew she wouldn't accept that answer, especially after the Cardin incident earlier in the year. "I-It's just... I'm sorry, Pyrrha."

"For what?" Now, a bit of confusion crept into Pyrrha's voice. Although based on the tone of his voice, she suspected Jaune's damnable inferiority complex was a factor.

"I knew how to give massages this whole time," Jaune began. "But it never occurred to me what kind of punishment your body might've been through in all your years of training and tournaments. I'm-I'm not saying you're not a tough cookie; you seriously are-"

"Did I hear 'cookie'?!" Ruby called from where she and Nora were apparently having a sandcastle-building contest.

"No, Ruby," Jaune called back before continuing, but not before he and Pyrrha shared a chuckle. "I guess what I'm getting at is, you've helped me so much this year, Pyrrha, and I haven't really done anything to pay you back even though I had a skill all this time that I coulda used to help you and-"

Pyrrha couldn't help but giggle as she reached out and grabbed his hand to stop his apology before it got any further into self-deprecating rant territory. "Jaune, Jaune, it's okay! I've already told you, you don't have to pay me back for anything. You owe me nothing."

"I know. I-I know you said that," Jaune replied, enjoying the calming effect that holding her hand had on him. "I just think I'd feel better if I did do something to pay you back, if only to make myself feel like I'm not wasting your valuable time."

"Jaune, you could never waste my time," Pyrrha reassured him, giving him a sweet smile and a squeeze of the hand. She then grabbed the bottle of tanning lotion from earlier and put it in his hand. "But if it's that important to you, how about this: after you're done putting lotion on my legs and buttocks, you can give me another back massage and I'll consider it payment for this past week's training. Sound good?"

"Yeah, that-that sounds great," Jaune said, feeling much better. He took the lotion, squirted some onto both hands, and was just about to put his hands on her thigh before a thought occurred to both him and Pyrrha simultaneously: _'Did she say her buttocks!?/Did I say my buttocks!?'_.

Jaune took a deep breath. He began rubbing the lotion on her leg, and he could feel Pyrrha's leg muscles. What surprised him wasn't how powerful Pyrrha's leg muscles felt; rather, Jaune was surprised by how surprised he was at the power in Pyrrha's legs. He knew she was enough of a badass that if she kicked a guy in the balls he'd end up in low orbit ( _owie!_ ), so why was Jaune surprised that he could sense the power in Pyrrha's legs when he put his hands on 'em?

Jaune then rubbed some lotion on the bottoms of Pyrrha's feet, before moving in to her... buttocks. Jaune gulped.

"Uh, P-Pyrrha? Um, I'm-I'm gonna uh, do your... y-y'know." His face was the same color as her hair.

"S-Sure. G-Go ahead," Pyrrha responded, trying her best to sound like she didn't mind or that she wasn't nervous about the situation. However, Pyrrha's face, like Jaune's, was the same color of her hair.

Jaune's mind went blank when his hands touched Pyrrha's behind. 'Taut' was probably the best word to describe it, but at the same time, it didn't feel strong enough of a word. That being said, Jaune's hands once again went into autopilot mode. Luckily for Jaune, his sense of shame acted as a timer to keep his hands from being on Pyrrha's posterior for too long, reducing the risk of the both of them being teased by Yang.

Jaune let out a breath he didn't realize he'd been holding. "Okay, so, you ordered a massage?" he said as he stretched out his fingers.

"Yes, please!" Pyrrha answered, sounding a bit too enthusiastic.

Jaune chuckled sheepishly, not entirely sure how he should interpret the redhead's enthusiasm. He quickly decided on feeling flattered that his partner was excited to get a massage.

"Normally I'd be using some massage oil, _buuut_ we don't have any and you're already greased up from the tanning lotion, so, uh... yeah… Eheheh," Jaune said as he began slowly rubbing her back, actually getting a giggle out of the redhead. _'Wow, really? That didn't even sound funny in my head. It didn't even warrant a humoring-me laugh. D-Does she... Could she...?'_

Jaune got quiet after that; Pyrrha chalked it up to him focusing on massaging her. She couldn't help but hum in pleasure as the blond boy's hands worked their magic and sent her to heaven.

"So, uh, you-you okay? How-How is it?" Jaune, while not unconfident in his massage skills, felt compelled to ask. He had an idea of what Pyrrha's answer would be, if the sounds she was making were any indication, but he didn't want to be cocky about it.

" _Mmmm_ , it's great, Jaune," Pyrrha managed to get out, just above a whisper. "Thank you."

"I-I-It's nothing, really," Jaune said. He was glad that she liked his massage, and he was grateful for the chance to do something for her for once instead of the other way around. Jaune then moved his hands down to the small of Pyrrha's back, working on her lumbar muscles.

" _Oh!_ " Pyrrha gasped when she felt Jaune put pressure on her lower back.

"You okay?" Jaune asked, his hair-trigger panic reflex activating. Despite most of his brain saying otherwise, a small part of Jaune's mind worried if he'd accidentally paralyzed his partner.

" _Ohhh_ , yes, right there," Pyrrha replied. She didn't notice Jaune let out a sigh of relief. Jaune continued to work her back, relaxing her body and mind to a state that she didn't know was even possible.

"Thank you... Jaune... That... feels... In...credible..." Pyrrha managed to say before actually falling asleep. Jaune couldn't help but chuckle at that. He worked one last knot out of her muscles before wiping his brow with the back of his hand. Jaune then got up, went to the cooler to get himself another soda, and sat back down next to a sleeping Pyrrha. Looking down at her, Jaune smiled and gently moved a stray lock of hair behind her ear before noting to himself how peaceful and angelic she looked when she was asleep.

 _-At the same time, over with Ruby and Nora-_

"Did I hear 'cookie'?!"

"No, Ruby."

"Aw- _Hey_! No fair!" A rock crashed through and collapsed the western tower of an impressive (read: six-and-a-half foot high walls of a pseudo-Gothic –or Remnant equivalent- design) sandcastle while high-pitched cackling was heard. "No fair, Nora! I was distracted!"

"All's fair in love and war, Ruby," Nora said in a singsong voice, waggling her finger at the pouty little rose. "But now you must prepare yourself, for the mighty First Pancake Battalion, the elites of my army, shall overrun and destroy your castle! Attack, my troops! ATTACK FOR THE GLORY OF THE HOLY SLOTH EMPIRE! AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!"

At the sound of Nora's cackling, a barrage of stones –launched from small catapults cobbled together from twigs, seashell fragments and pieces of kelp, no less!- battered what was left of the front wall of Ruby's sandcastle, causing the wall to collapse entirely and leaving Ruby defenseless. " _NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO_!"

"Bow before the Queen of the Castle!" Nora ordered like a monarch who's just conquered a rival kingdom.

"NEVER!" Ruby yelled defiantly, her head and arm sticking out of the pile of sand formerly known as Fort Doomcookie. She jumped out of the remains of her fortress, grabbed a plastic bucket and shovel, and ran toward the ocean under the power of her Semblance to retrieve water with which to build the sandcastle from which she can overthrow the Holy Sloth Empire in the name of the Rose Kingdom of Cookies.

Nora, despite wanting to bask in her victory for just a bit longer, knew she had no time to waste if she wanted her Empire to retain its dominance. She grabbed her own 'construction equipment' in order to reinforce Castle Moonpancake. "Quickly, my loyal sloth subjects, we must reinforce out fortifications! We cannot let the enemy surpass our mighty fortress! These rebels must be crushed! THE HOLY SLOTH EMPIRE SHALL REIGN FOR ALL ETERNITY! ALL HAIL PANCAKES!"

Ruby was facing an uphill battle. She had to rebuild Fort Doomcookie bigger and better than ever before _from scratch_! All Nora had to do was retrofit her existing fortifications. Luckily, her speed allowed her new Fort Devilcookie to rise from the ground as fast as Castle Moonpancake was rising with its new defenses. Ruby saw Zwei out the corner of her eye, just sitting there with his tail wagging, watching what was happening like he was binge-watching his favorite web series. "Zwei, quick! Dig a moat!"

"Bark bark!" Zwei replied as he followed his master's orders.

"Good boy!" Ruby complimented her beloved doggy. Then, after he'd finished digging a moat for Fort Devilcookie, Zwei then began digging one for Castle Moonpancake. "Zwei! You traitor!"

Nora laughed. "Hahahahaha! Guess Zwei wants us to battle on an even playing field."

"No fair!" Ruby whined in response.

"It IS fair!" Nora spouted. "That's why they call it 'an even playing field'!"

Ruby decided not to give her adversary the satisfaction of getting under her skin again, and instead put her focus back on building an impenetrable fortress from which she can conquer Nora, then the beach, and then, who knows? Maybe even the entire _WORLD_ will fall to its knees before the might of Fort Devilcookie! BWAHAHAHAHAHA!

Okay, no, but in as much seriousness as is possible in this situation, within ten minutes, both Fort Devilcookie and Castle Moonpancake were monolithic _FIFTEEN FOOT HIGH_ structures each with a six-foot deep, four-foot wide moat surrounding the front and sides. And now, as is traditional when two monarchs meet on the field of battle (at least, that's what the girls in question thought), a taunting contest signaled the start of battle.

"BEHOLD FORT DEVILCOOKIE! _COWER_ BEFORE MY IMPREGNABLE FORTRESS! FROM HERE, I SHALL CONQUER THE PATHETIC AND SELF-DESCRIBED 'HOLY' SLOTH EMPIRE! BY THE POWER OF COOKIES, I SHALL BE _**VICTORIOUS**_!" It was a hammier speech than anyone thought Ruby was capable of. If she actually had an army, her soldiers would be cheering. However, the only response she got from her opponent was a slow clap.

"Oh, that was very convincing, Ruby," Nora said, finishing up said slow clap. And then she turned the ham up to eleven. "Very convincing, indeed. But you forgot one thing: I ALREADY DEFEATED YOU ONCE! AND NOW, WITH MY CASTLE MOONPANCAKE MORE POWERFUL THAN EVER, I WILL DEFEAT YOU AGAIN! _LONG LIVE QUEEN NORA_! _**LONG LIVE THE HOLY SLOTH EMPIRE**_! _**AHAHAHAHAHA**_!"

And with that, words became war. Or at least they would've if it weren't for the fact that A) the only soldiers that Ruby and Nora had at the moment were, well, Ruby and Nora, and B) the only ammo either side had was rocks. Right now, it was nothing more than the two 'Queens' standing at the tops of their respective castle walls, pelting each other with pebbles.

After about three minutes, the ammunition stores in both Fort Devilcookie and Castle Moonpancake were nearing depletion. In addition to that, the weapon systems in both forts were beginning to overheat and jam (and by that it's meant that both Nora and Ruby's arms were getting tired from the rock-throwing). They had to find an edge, lest they end up deadlocked.

"Uh, uh, Yang!" Ruby called out to her sister. "I need reinforcements!"

"You got it Rubes!" Yang jumped into the fray, ready to protect her sister's kingdom from the tyranny of the Sloth Empress.

"Oh, _REALLY_?" Nora was enraged by this turn of events. "You're not the only one with reserves. REEEEEEENNN!"

All she got in response was a snore.

"Oh, right, he's asleep."

" _AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA_ _ **HAAAA**_!" Ruby couldn't help but laugh at this. Victory was so close she could taste it, and it tasted like chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream. Mmmmm. "Your most elite soldiers have _ABANDONED_ you, Queen Nora! Your Empire will FALL, and the Rose Kingdom of Cookies shall _**REIGN**_ _**SUPREME**_!"

Over by Blake and Sun, Sun was watching the battle unfold. _'That looks fun'_ , he thought to himself. He looked at the beautiful cat-girl reading next to him. They'd been relaxing, quietly enjoying each other's company; he didn't want Blake to think he was ditching her. "Uh, say, Blake, would you mind if I-"

"Go ahead," she answered without looking up from her book, the slightest of smiles on her lips.

"Thanks!" Sun quickly went over to the warzone. He held a plastic shovel over his head like a sword and proclaimed "Hear Ye! I, Sun Wukong, come to offer my services to the Queen of the Holy Sloth Empire!"

"And what is your price, Sun Wukong?" Nora asked, hoping these negotiations work to her favor.

"Pancakes! With all the sliced bananas your kingdom can afford!" Sun named his price. He was already enjoying this.

Nora was so glad that she could afford such a payment. However, as a ruler must not appear weak, she felt she needed to add a condition or two of her own. "You will have your pancakes and bananas, mercenary. But ONLY if you bring me victory!"

 _''Mercenary,' huh? I like that,'_ Sun smirked before grabbing an empty plastic bucket. "Your victory is all but assured, Queen Nora! Leave it to me!"

Sun ran to the water and filled the bucket. Running most of the way back, he begins spinning on his heel with the bucket of water out in front before letting loose the makeshift sling, sending it hurtling toward the wall of Fort Devilcookie. Before the heavy projectile could hit and cause catastrophic damage to Ruby's fortress, Yang knocked the bucket right out of the air using a sifter as a warhammer.

Sun then attacked Yang from above, using his plastic shovel from earlier as a sword (or maybe a battle-ax would be a better analogy, given the similar shape of the shovel). Yang blocked the strike, the whole time having cover fire –in the form of more thrown rocks- from her sister. Sun nimbly dodged Yang's attempt at a counterattack and kept her on the defensive. Yang needed an opening.

An opening showed itself. When Sun raised his plastic shovel/sword (or shovel/ax; which one did we agree on?), Yang rolled past him, toward the bucket he'd launched earlier. It had spilled its water onto the ground when Yang knocked it out of the air, and the sand was already wet and clumpy. Sun tried to attack from behind. Yang grabbed some of the wet sand, dodged, stuffed the wet sand down the back of Sun's trunks and then gave him a wedgie.

" **D'AAAAAAA-AAAAHHHHHHHHH**! _**WHY**_?!" Sun screamed.

"No fair! Your soldier just committed a war crime, Ruby!" Nora accused, throwing a rock at the reaper.

"Nuh-uh! You're the one who said 'All's fair in love and war,' aren't you?!" Ruby countered. Nora could only growl loudly at how she'd been hoisted by her own petard.

Growling, Sun grabbed his own handful of wet sand, worked it in his hands, and threw a ball of wet sand at Yang's head like a snowball.

"MY HAIR!" Yang's eyes had gone from their normal lilac to burning red.

"Whuh-oh," Sun and Ruby said simultaneously when Sun realized his fatal mistake. Before she could tell Sun to kiss his tail (and the butt it's attached to) goodbye, Yang received a volleyball to the head.

"Gotcha covered, Sun!" Nora said, giving him a thumbs-up. "You said that my victory was all but assured, now PROVE IT!"

"Yes, ma'am!" Sun replied before tackling Yang.

"Hmm. 'Ma'am'. I kinda like the sound of that," Nora mused to herself before throwing more rocks at both Yang and the opposing castle.

"Forget him, Yang! Break down her castle's defenses!" Ruby ordered.

"On it!" Yang threw the volleyball up to Ruby and protected herself from the barrage of rocks by catching as many of them as she could in the bucket. She rolled out of the way of another attack by Sun, scooping some sand into the bucket mid-roll. Heavy bucket in hand, Yang ran toward the walls of Castle Moonpancake. When she got close, she spun around on her heel with the bucket out, much like Sun had earlier.

" **YANG** **SMASH**!" Unlike Sun, Yang didn't let go of the bucket, using it more like a meteor hammer than a slingshot. Her improvised sledgehammer knocked three chunks out of the eastern tower of Nora's castle before her momentum ran out. "Ruby!"

"Hoo-wah!" Ruby threw the volleyball hard and fast at the hole Yang made. It hit dead-center, and the entire tower collapsed. Before she could celebrate the blow she'd dealt to Nora's kingdom, Ruby saw Sun sabotaging her own walls. "Yang! SABOTAGER!"

"I think the word you're looking for is 'Saboteur,' Ruby!" Yang said as she saw what Sun was doing: planting some plastic tools –shovel, rake, sifter- into the wall of Fort Devilcookie. "Hey!"

Sun looked at her charging at him. She had the bucket over her hand like a boxing glove, and her arm was cocked back to launch it at him like the turkeys from that food fight. _'Now!'_ Sun thought to himself as he whipped his arms across the tools he'd implanted, knocking the tools and chunks of wall our with them. Then he ducked out of the way as the bucket sent flying by Yang impacted the now-weakened part of the wall. The bucket had implanted itself into the wall, and when Sun yanked it out, a chunk of Fort Devilcookie's front wall came crashing down.

"AAAAAAHHHH!" Ruby cried as she witnessed the damage done to her fortress.

"Uh, oops," Yang said when she saw what she'd accidentally caused, before taking the volleyball to the back of the head, causing her to just faceplant into the sand. As could be expected, Nora was heard laughing.

"Uh-oh," Ruby said. Sun stood up, picked up his shovel, and began slowly walking towards Fort Devilcookie with a somewhat evil grin on his face. Ruby was desperately throwing whatever rocks she had left, trying to keep the mercenary Faunus at bay, but he barely had to move to avoid the little rose's desperate potshots. As he was walking past a plastered-all-over-the-ground Yang, he stopped when he felt something grab his ankle.

"Okay, now..." Yang's muffled voice could just barely be heard. Holding Sun's leg with one hand and pushing herself off the ground with the other, she threw Sun at Nora's castle while screaming at the top of her lungs: "... **NOW I'M MAD!** "

"Yay!" Ruby cheered as she watched Sun scream and crash into Castle Moonpancake, the impact kicking up a small cloud of dust and sand.

It was this impact that woke Ren up. He looked around for a moment and saw Zwei sitting next to him, looking at him.

"Bark bark!"

"Oh, hey Zwei," he greeted the dog. He decided to watch the carnage; after all, in this case he wasn't really obligated to clean up after Nora's shenanigans for once.

Jaune was also watching the combat. It was honestly more entertaining than several movies or video games he was having trouble thinking examples of at the moment. Plus, it was free! He already had a soda, so all that was missing now was the popcorn. Being her leader, Jaune decided to root for Nora to pass the time while he was keeping an eye on a napping Pyrrha (in a way that was less creepy than how it was just described, of course).

Sun dazedly walked out of the hole in Castle Moonpancake caused by his momentary flight. Shaking his head to clear it, he charged at Yang with a roar. They grappled for a minute, then Yang tried a suplex on Sun, which would've probably worked had Sun not done a flip when he was over Yang's head in order to kick her hard in the back. After regaining her footing, Yang picked up the sifter and turned to see Sun standing before her with the shovel in his hand, her sister's battle-scarred fortress behind him. They charged at each other again and when they got close, swung their weapons at each other. The weapons hit their respective targets simultaneously, the force of the impacts sending the two warriors careening backwards like something straight out of a shonen anime. Both combatants then slid to a halt after going clean...ish...ly through the sandcastles.

There was a beat of silence. Ruby and Nora then felt a rumble beneath their feet. The foundations of the two great sandcastles gave out, causing them to fall forward towards each other.

Opening their eyes, the girls saw that their sandcastles were safely(ish) leaning against each other. Ruby glared at Nora, Nora glaring back. This was it: do or die. This next move would decide the victor of this war. Balling their fists, Ruby and Nora continued glaring at each other, their faces inching closer together. Each girl raised a hand, aaaand... Slap fight. The Battle of the Beach would be decided... by a slap fight.

Jaune chuckled at this turn of events. Given that the battle had taken place on the beach and the fortresses were made of sand, what other possible outcome was there? Jaune turned his head when he heard Pyrrha yawn and smack her lips, indicating she was waking up. Propping herself up onto her elbows, about to push herself up into a sitting position, she didn't notice that her bikini top was still undone from earlier, but Jaune DEFINITELY noticed.

"Ah-oh! Uh, P-P-P-P-Pyrrha! Pyr-Pyrrha, Pyrrha don-don't -don't get-don't get up," Jaune stuttered, his back to her, sitting stiff as a board with his face a shade of red previously unknown to man- or Faunus-kind. Pyrrha, her mind still not completely booted back up from her nap, was a little confused as to why her leader sounded so panicked. Then she looked down. Panic set into her mind so instantaneously it almost seemed like the panic had travelled back in time to set in a microsecond before she looked down.

"Eep!" She shot upright with her face redder than EVER before and her arms were crossed, holding the wayward bikini top on her chest. She turned around so that her back was to Jaune and quickly secured the top, it setting in that she almost flashed him.

"I-I-I-I-I I didn't- didn't see a-anything, I-I-I swear," Jaune said after several seconds of PAINFULLY awkward silence.

"O-Okay, g-good," Pyrrha replied. Several more seconds of awkward silence later, she decided to try to break to silence. "So, uh, did-did I miss anything?"

"Oh, uh, well... We dodged the draft," Jaune answered, feeling slightly less awkward with the change in subject.

Of all the possible answers Pyrrha had been expecting, THAT was definitely not one of them. Embarrassment be damned, she needed to look him in the eye when he explained. "Okay... You're going to have to elaborate on that one."

Turning toward her with a chuckle, Jaune pointed toward the two girls slapping each other atop what was essentially a triangular arch made of two giant –albeit damaged beyond repair- sandcastles leaning against each other due to destroyed foundations. "Nora and Ruby were having kind of a war between their sandcastles. Ruby lost the first 'battle', but then they rebuilt their sandcastles, Ruby called in Yang for help, and then Sun offered Nora his services when she couldn't get Ren to help because he was asleep at the moment. Sun and Yang had an epic brawl on behalf of their 'Queens', and well, you can see the end result yourself."

" _*Giggles*_ Oh my, well then I guess we did dodge the draft," Pyrrha laughed.

Just then, there was another rumble beneath Ruby and Nora's feet. They looked down, looked back up, and then the remains of their once-great castles collapsed out from under them. All that was left now was a large pile of sand with two energetic young Huntresses-in-training buried somewhere within.

Jaune and Pyrrha were laughing out loud. "You guys okay over there?"

Ruby's head popped up out of the sand first. She began vigorously shaking her head to shake the sand out of her hair. Nora popped her head up to the surface and began blowing sand out of her mouth... directly onto Ruby's head, rendering the younger girl's efforts to get sand out of her hair moot.

"So Nora, who won?" Ren asked with a cheeky grin, Jaune and Pyrrha laughing even harder. Zwei began sniffing Ren's head. "Hey, Zwei, what-what're you- Wait, no nooo-"

Zwei had stopped sniffing, turned, and lifted one of his hind legs.

"Zwei, _NO_!" Ruby cried out, but it was too late.

" **RUUUUUUUUUBBYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!** " Ren burst forth from his sand-mermaid body.

Ruby began screaming in fear and jumped into Nora's arms bridal-style. Nora, who was the only one present who'd ever seen Ren this mad before, also began screaming and, the moment Zwei jumped into Ruby's arms, began running for all of their lives.

Jaune and Pyrrha were laughing their butts off. "Should – _*Laughter*_ \- should we do something?"

" _*Laughter*_ Oh! Oh man, my ribs," Jaune held up his finger to signal her to give him a second. He then moved to get up. "Okay, I got an idea."

He went over to where some of the group's stuff was still laying around, picked up one of the Super Soakers, and went to the water to fill it up. He walked back, stood in the middle of the beach, and pumped his weapon. Nora, who was still carrying Ruby who was still holding Zwei, soon ran past him.

" _AAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH_ –Hi, Jaune!- _AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH_!"

Once they ran past, Jaune shouldered the water gun and gave it a few more pumps for good measure. Once Ren ran by him, he pulled the trigger, dousing the currently-not-so-stoic stoic with cold seawater. "There. I washed off the dog pee."

Ren did not look amused.

"Aw, c'mon, dude, don't gimme that look! Would ya rather smell like dog piss or would ya rather smell like the ocean?"

Jaune almost missed it, but a devious look flashed in Ren's eyes for just a split second before he disarmed Jaune and sprayed him. "Fair enough, Jaune. Fair enough."

Now it was Jaune's turn to not look amused. He snatched the Super Soaker back and tried to spray Ren again, but Ren spin-kicked the water gun off course, causing Jaune to simply waste ammo. Ren used the spin kick to give himself a slight boost on his way to the other Super Soaker. Jaune gave chase, occasionally trying to hit his moving target, to no avail. One of Jaune's missed shots sprayed Neptune, who was now unamused.

Ren got to the other Super Soaker, picked it up, and pointed it at Jaune. Jaune was pointing his right back. It was a classic Vacuan standoff. Jaune –knowing that Ren's water gun was empty and was thus bluffing- pulled the trigger, only for barely even a spritz to come out of the nozzle.

"Looks like you're empty, there, Jaune," Ren said with a cocky smirk.

"Well, to be fair, Ren, you were empty the whole time," Jaune said.

"True..." Ren replied.

Their Vacuan standoff continued for a few seconds. Both parties' eyes narrowed, and then they made a break for the shoreline to fill their weapons. Neptune tried to trip Jaune out of revenge for the spraying, but when he stuck his foot out, Jaune grabbed onto him to keep his balance, resulting in Neptune being the one with his face in the sand. Now he was even more unamused than before, and then started chasing them.

Both guys jumped into the water, keeping their heads under until the tanks on their water guns were full (although they did make sure they didn't accidentally catch any fish). They both burst out from the surface like Special Forces soldiers and started spraying at each other. They kited around each other in the water, missing more often than not. Once they ran out again, they were about to refill before they were interrupted; Jaune got his head dunked under by Neptune, while Ren got a bucket of water dunked on his head from a no-longer-fearing-for-their-lives Ruby and Nora.

"Hey! Don't go playing in the water without me!" Yang said as she jumped in and made a splash. She began splashing around with Ruby, and they splashed Weiss to get her to play, which she eventually did.

Jaune, for one, wasn't enjoying himself at the moment. It was mostly because Neptune was still dunking his head under the water. "Pyrrha! _*Gurgle gurgle gurgle*_ Pyrrha! Need backup! _*Gurgle gurgle*_ "

Next thing Neptune knew, water was poured on his head, immediately followed by his head getting covered by a plastic bucket and then getting pushed into the water with what felt like a foot to his side, and finally getting back up and removing the bucket from his head only to be sprayed by a Super Soaker.

"Okay, okay, _easy_ there, Pyrrha," Jaune said, gingerly taking the water gun from the redhead's hands. "I think that's enough backup for right now."

Pyrrha rubbed the back of her head, embarrassed that she'd kinda lost it there and basically assaulted Neptune. "Oh, uh, eheheh. Um, sorry... about that, Neptune."

"No worries," he replied. He wanted to hesitate for a second, make her sweat it for a minute, but just couldn't bring himself to do so. His thought process for deciding against it could be summed up as: ' _There is a female who is pretty. She must be forgiven of all transgressions_.'

"Alright, good. We're all still friends," Jaune said. "Now that that's settled..."

"Oh!" Pyrrha got sprayed. Jaune had a cheeky grin on his face. Pyrrha splashed some water at him. It quickly escalated into a no-holds-barred splash-fest after that.

Several minutes of waterborne chaos passed. At one point Jaune tossed his Super Soaker over to Ruby. It was hilarious not only seeing such a relatively petite girl wielding such a relatively large water gun, but also spraying everything in sight like a maniac while using her speed Semblance to cause waves that soaked everyone even more. Blake –being part cat- stayed away from the water, still reading her book and absentmindedly petting the Zwei that was napping on her lap.

Jaune and Pyrrha were splashing around, their fun leading them close to the waterline (or whatever one would call it). Some splish-splashing, constant laughter, Pyrrha jumping onto Jaune's back, and then Jaune fell over. Somehow, almost inexplicably, falling over with Pyrrha on his back resulted in Jaune on his back with Pyrrha on top of him, straddling him. On the way down, her circlet –the only thing keeping her hair under control since it wasn't in its usual ponytail- fell off, allowing her blood-red locks to cascade down freely, surrounding both their faces like a curtain. Cheeks flushed as verdant green eyes locked with deep blue. Looking his partner in the eye, it only took about four-ninths of a millisecond for things to just click in Jaune's head.

"Pyrrha/Jaune? I have something very important to ask you," they said simultaneously. They didn't notice that their faces had moved closer together by maybe about a millimeter.

"What is it, Pyrrha/Jaune?" They asked each other simultaneously (again) while their faces moved in by another millimeter or so, give or take. Even them chuckling at their own simultaneousness was simultaneous.

"Sorry, you go first," Again, Jaune and Pyrrha spoke at the same time, and chuckled at the same time. Another millimeter or two disappeared from the distance between them.

"Same time? Sure, we're already doing that anyway," Simultaneous speaking is simultaneous. Also, the fact that their faces moved closer together by another couple millimeters should go without saying at this point.

Jaune's chest felt tight with nerves, as did Pyrrha's. They continued to speak at the same time.

" _*Gulp*_ O-On three." Their faces moved closer.

"One..." Closer...

"Two..." Closer still.

"Three. _*Deep breath*_ Pyrrha/Jaune, will you... be my girl/boyfrien-" their simultaneous question was interrupted by their lips crashing together. In Jaune's brain, things clicked together, and _this_... For lack of a better descriptor in Jaune's brain, this just _made sense_.

If Remnant had a heaven, Pyrrha was sure she was there. It was so surreal that what small part of her brain not occupied by utter bliss wanted a pinch or something to make sure she wasn't dreaming! That pinch came as she felt Jaune nibble on her lower lip, begging entrance into her mouth, which she gladly granted. As their tongues danced in each other's mouths, neither wanted this sensation to end; they both could've died happy right there.

Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it), Jaune and Pyrrha's lungs refused to let them die in such a blissful state of face-sucking. Breaking away, their lungs burned as they gasped for oxygen. Silence developed between the two, but this time it wasn't awkward. It took a little bit for either of them to think of what to say. Jaune had the brilliant idea to open with a joke.

" _*Ahem*_ So, uh, _*Cough*_ was that a 'maybe' or...?" Pyrrha just laughed. Jaune always seemed to know how to make her feel good. She sat up, allowing him to do the same, as tears of joy were building up in her eyes.

"Hey, hey, don't cry," Jaune wanted to cup her cheek and wipe the tears from her eyes (not realizing they were, as stated, tears of joy), but stopped. "Oh, uh, sandy hands."

"It's okay, Jaune. I'm not crying," she reassured him. She then felt a shiver and let out what Jaune could only describe as the most adorable sneeze he'd ever witnessed. He couldn't help but chuckle.

"Come on. Let's go dry you off and warm you up before you catch a cold," Jaune said as he stood up, grabbing her bronze circlet off the ground and holding his hand out to her.

"Thank you," Pyrrha said, grabbing his hand and standing up. They didn't let go of each other's hands, they stared into each other's eyes, and their faces began to move closer again, but...

" _AAAAAAAAAAAAAAWWWWWWWWWWWW_!" A multitude of female voices interrupted the moment. Jaune and Pyrrha blushed, Jaune moreso.

"OH! Uh, he-hey, guys," Jaune greeted in a nervous panic.

"Oh, relax, Vomit Boy! We're just happy for the two of you," Yang said. She then turned to Blake's direction and with a thumbs-up, made an announcement. "Hey, Blake! Mission accomplished!"

Blake responded with a thumbs-up of her own without looking up from her book.

"Uh, I'm sorry. 'Mission accomplished'?" Jaune asked.

"I'll explain it," Pyrrha said as she and Jaune went back to their towels.

 _-Later-_

"Wow, now I feel like an idiot _and_ a jerk. I'm sorry," Jaune said. He and Pyrrha were cuddled together under a towel, Pyrrha having just finished explaining Yang's 'Mission accomplished' comment.

"You're already forgiven," Pyrrha replied, giving him a peck on the cheek.

"Still, I promise to make it up to you for making you go through all that," Jaune said, with a determined look in his eye. Pyrrha only hummed in response; she knew that look in his eye. They sat in a comfortable silence for a while.

"Say, Pyrrha, you wanna... I don't know, stay at my house with me over Spring Break?" Jaune asked.

"Um, Jaune, _*nervous chuckle*_ I _just_ agreed to be your girlfriend. Don't you think taking me home to meet your parents might be rushing things a bit?" Pyrrha said, a bit nervous.

"Well, when you put it that way, you've got a point," Jaune replied with a chuckle. "But the truth is, I was gonna ask you even if... _this_ , didn't happen."

"Really?"

"Yeah, I had a feeling you were just gonna stay at Beacon all week, and I didn't feel right going home to my family, having fun, while my partner was copped up in school. I already cleared it with my parents, so what do you say?"

Pyrrha was touched. That was easily the sweetest thing anyone had ever done for her. Tears of joy threatened to fall again as she couldn't help but smile. "Yes. I'd love that, Jaune."

"Great! We leave first thing Monday morning," Jaune said before leaning in to kiss his girlfriend. This was the beginning of a beautiful new stage of both their lives.

 **-THE END-**

 **HOO-WEE! If you made it this far, congratulations! I didn't think I'd make it this far either. I just spent 8 ½ months (EIGHT AND A HALF MONTHS!) writing this sucker, having** _ **severely**_ **underestimated the word count necessary to tell the story I wanted to tell, all the while feeling that** **the story flowed better as a oneshot. If you disagree with me on that last point, feel free to leave a review. But if you do** **leave a review, please don't complain about the length; I am WELL AWARE that for a oneshot, most people would categorize this one as 'too long'. Frankly I'm just glad I finished before the premiere of Volume 3. Oh, one last thing: can I just take a moment to say that I love how passionate, creative, and energetic this fandom is? When I started this story, the RWBY Archive was at less than 7k, and now it's OVER 9000! Sorry, as a lifelong DBZ fan, I HAD to. Thank you for reading.**

 **-x-x-x-x-x-**

 **It takes me a while to write these fics; it's partly why this is only the third one I've ever done. But about a week after I started writing this story, some terrible news broke: Monty Oum,** _ **RWBY**_ **'s brilliant creator, passed away at the all-too-young age of 33.** _ **RWBY**_ **is one of my favorite shows of all time. I am writing this end author's note on the dreadful day, before this story was even finished, to dedicate this fanfic to Monty. I don't see this measly oneshot as an even remotely worthy tribute to such a brilliant man –nay,** _ **artist**_ **\- and I doubt many will argue that. But it's the best –and most fitting- thing I can do.**

 _ **Rest in Peace, Monty Oum. You will be missed.**_


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